A Place in Time
by Caelestis Kibeth
Summary: Forced to flee a world long devastated, Mirai Trunks and Pan must chase their children into a precarious timeline. But what kind of trouble, questions and revelations will their young family stir up in a past that is so unlike their future?
1. 00: Warrior's Rumination

**A Place in Time**

**Prologue; Warrior's Rumination**

**Caelestis ****Kibeth**

When she found me, I had resigned myself to the realization that my life was over already. I had never expected that things could come crashing down around me as quickly as they had, and was certain—as certain as I was that I simply shouldn't be living any longer—that there was nothing I, nor anyone else, could do to pick up the pieces.

To help you understand this, maybe I should take you back to the beginning, the source of my problem; the android. Unsurprising, as androids have always seemed to be the source of all problems in my life... but to equate this android to the terrors of 16, 17, or 18 would be foolish.

I was a foolish person, back then.

It was a lost model, which during the Cell Games had managed to be overlooked—another testament to my foolishness—and, unlike the others, was truly far more machine than man. It could not be reasoned with, it could not be talked to, and when it resurfaced, it became painfully clear, painfully _quickly_ that I was up against a force far more than I was prepared to reckon with.

Town by town, city by city, the android set out to finish the work of it's predecessors. The destruction was unprecedented, and was devastating to a world that had barely begun to heal from the last.

At the time that It finally came to see me, I still didn't understand the magnitude of what I was going up against. Could you really blame me? It was only five years prior that I'd returned from the past and taken out it's brothers and sister for good. I was Trunks Briefs, Super Saiya-jin, most powerful man on earth. I was cocky. I was stupid. I was ready.

I was _not _ready.

That was the first lesson it taught me.

The cloudless September sky seemed to shudder around us as blow after crushing blow, ki blast after searing ki blast were exchanged. We went on for hours in tireless fashion. Whilst I managed-very barely-to claim victory in the end, I could not help but feel as if the prize was not worth the price. Skyscrapers and shops, homes and cars, streets and sidewalks—below in the city the destruction was widespread. The West Sector suffered most abundantly, right below where we had battled most heavily and violently.

A wave of horrible nostalgia overcame me as I peered down upon my leveled hometown. I had set out trying to protect this city, had vowed to myself that I would never have to bear witness to this scene again... and look what had now become of it.

That was the second thing It taught me.

I was careless.

And I was about to find out just how careless I had been.

Heavily wounded and burdened with a stronger fatigue than I had ever experienced, I halfheartedly hovered back towards Capsule Corp. However, I was not about to find the warm bed and happy arms of my mother that I expected to return to—and if I hadn't been prepared for the android, I was even less prepared for the sight that awaited me.

I touched down on the scorched yard as gently as if I were landing on egg shells, terror coursing through my veins as I laid eyes on an image that is forever engraved in my mind as the worst I have ever-_will _ever-see.

My home had always been one of the largest in the city, but you wouldn't have been able to tell by what remained then. Half of the right side blown off—my mother's workroom, our bedrooms and kitchen and living room, oh Kami—and the left nearly caved in upon itself, it was hard to imagine that this building could have ever housed living beings.

Feeling a familiar stinging in my eyes, I ran with all my might towards the remaining pieces of the building, screaming out at the top of my lungs for my mother, head whipping around frantically for any sign of her. Even with my wearied body, I didn't let up in my search for hours upon end. But it wasn't before long that my voice grew hoarse and I could no longer yell for her, and only then did I finally fall to my knees and allow the tears to flow freely.

I knew already that the weapon which had taken my home was a stray ki blast, the very same fate that had befallen most of the city. I knew that my mother had been, by me, instructed to hide in her bedroom.

I also knew that her bedroom was one of the many rooms collapsed in rubble.

What I didn't realize, until I managed to drag myself up from the pitiful ball I'd curled up into, was something much worse than all of that. What I didn't realize was that the ki blast that had done the damage, that had disintegrated my only remaining parent's body to nothing but ash, hadn't come from an android. I didn't realize it until I began to walk, lost and alone among the remains, that the signature was unavoidably, _unmistakably_ my own.

That day was what I for a long time considered the beginning of the end of my life.

I couldn't stay in the city any longer. The remaining denizens had grand plans to rebuild Capsule Corp. in their thanks to me, but that was impossible. There was no way I could bring myself to stay there with all the haunting, horrible memories any longer. I fled the city, attempted to run away from my old life and all of my problems. I ran to a place where they would never find me, to a countryside miles and miles away from my old home. I'm sure that Vegeta would have scorned me for taking the coward's way out and running like I had, but I had given up so very long ago trying to be strong like my father was. I just wasn't fit out to be the perfect warrior son that he would have wanted.

_I_ wanted to start my life anew. _I_ wanted to forget everything that had happened before. I wanted to forget my mother, forget my home, and forget my whole life. I would no longer be Trunks Briefs. From then on, I would simply be Trunks. No last name and no heritage. Without heritage, I couldn't have killed my mother. Without heritage, I couldn't be a Saiya-jin prince. I couldn't have experienced such pain in my childhood because of my blood. I couldn't have known that my father had died before I knew him because I had never had one. Without heritage, I had convinced myself that I would be at peace.

I found out very soon that I was foolish—always, _always _foolish-in thinking that I could simply forget who I was. I was infuriated with myself for even for a second imagining that I could forget my mother, my father, my blood. I realized what a great disrespect I was doing them by running away.

This frustrated me to no end. I could not bear to forget my heritage, but neither could I handle the guilt that was suffocating me at being the cause of my mother's death. I was slowly driving myself insane, and there came a point when I simply couldn't take it any longer.

After years of telling myself that my life was over, I was finally going to make it a reality.

It was October then, the brisk evening finding me in my usual spot on the cliffs just outside my forest home. The cliffs at night were the one small fragment of peace in my life, as they allowed me to gaze up into an unclouded sky of pearly-white stars. I would tell myself that my parents were up there, looking down on me. I liked to talk to them. It always made me feel as if, for a single moment, none of this were real. I apologized to them for all the horrible things I'd done and they just looked back at me and nodded in understanding; they were there, they forgave me, and everything was alright.

As I stared up into the heavens that night, my hand tightened around the hilt of the sword at my side. I was unusually calm, given what I knew I was about to do. Even as I felt the sharp edge of cold steel nudge insistently at the skin of my bare chest, my heart skipped no extra beats. This time, I was ready.

A thud resounded throughout the trees, and a searing pain permeated my body. My vision wavered, my eyes watered, my hands clenched around the hilt of the sword… and then, slowly, it all ebbed away.

The last thing I saw was her frightened face hovering over me... and my last thought, with sudden clarity, was that I was _not_ ready.

I was not ready yet.


	2. 01: Aftermath of a Fated Tryst

**A Place in Time**

**Chapter One; Aftermath of a Fated Tryst**

**Caelestis** **Kibeth**

_The last thing I saw was her frightened face hovering over me and my last thought, with sudden clarity, was that I was not ready._

_I was not ready yet._

_**Briefs Household**_

_**( future timeline )**_

Pan groaned and rolled over in the crisp white sheets, attempting to escape the sun that shone insistently through the bedroom window. Her movements stirred the figure beside her, and a strong arm flexed tighter around her waist to keep her from leaving his side. She smiled to herself and obligingly buried her head into his chest, the muscles he donned quite skilfully doing the job of diverting the light from her eyes. It was at times like these that Pan really loved being as small as she was—whether it was the sun or a rambunctious toddler, she could always find a way to hide behind her husband.

Soon enough, the young woman found herself drifting swiftly back into her abandoned dreamland, allowing a happy grogginess to weigh down upon her eyelids—

"MAMA!"

Pan gave a disgruntled 'oomph' sound as the air found its way out of her lungs from the source of the little—little _big, _ugh Kami—voice that had just settled on top of her. She groaned as the invisible form wiggled and bounced upon her abdomen. Pan took a moment to silently curse several universes and deities before she threw the covers from over her head, and came face-to-face with a five-year-old, cerulean-eyed carbon copy of herself.

Looking absolutely delighted at the results of her wake-up call, the little girl stopped bouncing in favor of falling forward onto her mother, delivering herself in a warm embrace. "You're up!" the child exclaimed jovially, her voice chiming out in high, girlish tones.

Despite her mild irritation at being forced from what had been a very promising rest, Pan could not help but allow a smile to pull up on her lips as she returned the embrace. She shifted so that she could sit resting against the headboard and carried the girl with her, positioning her in her lap. "Good morning, Musume," she returned—albeit much less enthusiastically—before giving her a kiss on the forehead between disheveled raven locks.

"You and Papa sleep way too long, you know. I've been up for hours!"

As if just reminded of his presence, Pan gave a glance to the sleeping man beside her, and then turned back to Musume with a frown. "Hey now, why didn't you wake him up too!" she exclaimed. Clearly, she was being done a terrible injustice here.

Musume imitated her mother's frown, eyes darting back and forth between her parents for a long moment before answering. "But I _tried_ to wake him up already. Papa didn't move!"

Pan sighed, realizing that she should have already known that answer. Trunks had always been a heavy sleeper—a trait that went hand-in-hand with his stubbornness—always adamant to never get up before he was damn well ready to. It seemed that not even his daughter's shrieks did the trick, something that Pan had found particularly irritating during Musume's infancy.

But then again, maybe it was a good thing that he had that ability under his belt. Kami only knew what kind of chaos the house would be in the mornings if Musume's younger brothers hadn't inherited it. With their sister sleeping in the room in-between theirs', and with her belief that once she had woken up that the rest of the household should wake up with her, the two of them would get even less sleep than Pan did on a normal basis.

Returning her thoughts to the present, Pan gently lifted her daughter and set her feet on the floor. "Musu," she addressed her fondly, "Go do your best to wake up Gohan and Vegeta for me. I'll find a way to wake up your dad."

Eager to accomplish her mission, the little girl nodded vigorously and skittered off into the hallway. Once she was out of sight, the raven-haired woman rolled over on top of her husband's sleeping form, lowering her mouth to nibble lightly on his ear. Trunks fidgeted at the sensations caused by her gentle bites and the feeling of her hot breath on his lobe, and she smirked as he rolled over onto his back.

Moving with him to hover over his chest, Pan trailed agonizingly slow kisses along his expanse of exposed flesh—up his collarbone, neck, and then, finally, to his lips. It took mere seconds before she felt his lips soften against her own, parting just slightly to respond groggily to the kiss. A pair of hands moved up and along her sides, caressing the curves there blindly and yet superbly, as only a person thoroughly acquainted with each nuance of her figure would have been able to.

Trunks was indeed acquainted with Pan's figure. Very, _very _well.

Moments later, she pulled back and watched his heavy eyelids slide open to take in the view of her contented expression. She was beautiful when she smiled, he thought, and sent fleeting thanks to Kami that he was alive today to take it in every morning. There had been such a long time when the idea that either of them would ever smile again seemed like cruel wishful thinking.

"I love it when you do that," Trunks muttered, a slight purr tinting his voice. Pan's response came in the form of a quiet laugh and one more soft kiss, just for good measure.

She leaned back slightly and allowed him to brush a few dark locks behind her ear, pushing them out of the way of his view of her onyx eyes. Those eyes, gorgeous in all their depth and darkness, were quite possibly the first thing he'd fallen in love with—and who would ever have guessed that they would become only the tip of the iceberg?

They shined now as Pan smirked playfully down at her husband. "I would hope so," she replied, in turn fingering his unique violet locks (which sorely needed a haircut, she noted). "I may have mothered three children, but at twenty-four I would hate to think that I'd lost my touch already." She bit her lip and looked away from his face then, as if remembering something. "_You_, however, have a birthday coming up… how old will you be again?" Pan teased. "Thirty-_nine_, is it?"

"Thirty-_eight_." He chuckled, extending a finger to nudge the end of her nose. "I'm not all that old, you're just too young to understand that," he countered lightly.

She shrugged off his response, her smile remaining positively wicked. "Do you think you can manage to get up and help me with breakfast now, or are you too aged and crippled to move?"

"Hey now!" Trunks exclaimed, although not sounding offended in the least. Pan smirked and rested her chin in hand, awaiting the next jibe to come about her youth—what she got instead was the unexpected sensation of being thrown up off her husband's warm body and into the air quite suddenly. She squeaked in surprise, not realizing what had happened until she felt two chiseled arms latch securely underneath her legs and behind her back.

It was Trunks' turn to look triumphant now as he made a leap off of their shared bed with her settled, momentarily paralyzed by her surprise, within his grip. "Now, what was that you were saying about—oh, what were the words? _Aged_ and _crippled_, I think?"

Pan stuck her tongue out at him, as he carried her like a new bride out of their bedroom and downstairs into the kitchen. He did not let her go until he found a clear counter to set her down upon, and when he'd finally finished his show of masculinity and power, he stood back and regarded Pan with that frustratingly charming arrogant smirk of his.

"Yeah, yeah," she laughed, hopping down from her makeshift throne to lay a pair of slender arms lazily over his shoulders. "So I suppose you're not getting _too _old yet."

And really, who could deny Trunks Briefs when he smiled like that? He was a man of such attractive personality once he let it show, a surprising idea in the least when one considered the state in which she'd first found him. Even after that fated meeting, it had been a long, arduous task to break through the rock-solid emotional defenses he'd put up around himself. But once she had begun to chip away at the walls of that fortress, Pan had unearthed a person unlike any other—a person that she had found she simply couldn't keep herself from falling in love with.

She gave him a swift peck on the lips before the quick scamper of feet on the wooden floors above caused her to pull away from their intimate position, and Pan turned her attention to searching the contents of the refrigerator behind her. A mere split second later, Musume, followed by Gohan and Vegeta, burst into the kitchen at full force, the latter two boys already clad in full training garb.

The twins made a beeline for Trunks, each grabbing onto a leg of their father's baggy grey sleep pants insistently. The older Briefs male regarded his sons with a raised brow and confused expression, as if he didn't already know exactly what they wanted.

When it was apparent that they weren't going to elicit any further reaction from him, Gohan growled and tightened his grip on the soft fabric impatiently. "Come _on_, Dad! We were supposed to be out training _five minutes_ ago!"

Vegeta nodded in solemn agreement, mimicking his twin brother's actions. "Yeah, come on, Dad!" he repeated. "Don't tell us you forgot! We train at seven on the dot _every _morning!"

Trunks continued to glance down at the boys curiously, and worried on his lip. "Huh… you know, that _does _sound kind of familiar," he muttered, barely able to hold back a laugh at the exasperated looks he got in return.

Of course he was only messing around with them. Since the boys had turned four a couple of months before, they had been deemed old enough to begin to learn how to fight, something that both had taken on with excitement despite the heavy and unnatural strain such a task was for children their age.

Neither Trunks nor Pan had ever wanted to teach their children to fight; they had, however, long ago resigned themselves to the idea that such a thing was, terribly, a necessity of life—at least in the world in which they were raising them. It simply wasn't safe, even out there in the seclusion of the countryside, and knowing that their children were learning to defend themselves was a small reassurance.

Musume yawned loudly and walked past her brothers, rolling her eyes visibly as she made her way over to Pan. Unlike was the case with the twins, Trunks and Pan's daughter had never shown any real drive to follow family tradition and become a fighter. It wasn't that she was gentle—because Kami knew that was the last adjective that one used to describe Musume Briefs—but rather generally disinterested in the subject. No matter how many training sessions she had engaged in with Pan, she simply couldn't be made to appreciate the idea of getting covered in blood and sweat and beating up another person.

After a year of trying, and of teaching her the basics of Saiya-jin combat, Trunks and Pan had finally decided to stop forcing her into it. Only once in a while did Musume actually venture out with her father and brothers to get some exercise, the rest of the time treating their obsession with combat training as she did just then—to be nothing beyond silly.

In the background, Musume caught her father finally relenting to Gohan and Vegeta's pestering and scoffed quietly, reaching into the refrigerator to hand her mother the items she needed to help prepare breakfast. She may not have liked to fight, but one thing that _did _excite her was being allowed to help with the cooking.

Pan set her daughter up on the counter and handed her a spoon and bowl as Gohan and Vegeta rushed outside to warm up in anticipation of their father's arrival.

So began an average day in the Briefs home. One of the last that—if all went well, Pan thought—their modest little countryside home would ever see.

_**Capsule Corporation**_

_**( present timeline )**_

"_Trunks_!"

A pair of voices whined his name in unison, causing the young president to glance down at the two girls that had very suddenly taken up attaching themselves to either of his arms. He paled a little—_when_ had Pan and his sister managed to sneak up on him?—and gulped visibly. All he had to do was see that gleam in their eyes and Trunks could tell that trouble had arrived.

"Ah… yes?" he asked, cautiously.

Bra tightened her brow into a glare frighteningly similar to their father's, and shook his left arm in annoyance. "Don't play stupid, Trunks Briefs!" she demanded. "You said last week that you owed us a day out with you and we're here to cash in! You've got the nice car and the credit cards, so take us shopping _now_!"

"Excuse me?" he asked, looking incredulous. Of course Trunks remembered his earlier promise, but the little scream of exasperation Bra gave just then was worth the act. As if they would have allowed him to forget his promise in the first place. Ever since he had blown them off the week before in favor of sparring with Goten (hey, it was once in a lifetime when his best friend took time away from Paresu to do anything else), neither of the girls had stopped pestering him to find a day off to repay his debt. "Ohhh, oh right. Shopping with you and Pan… yes, it's all coming back now. All in a big ball of regret and dismay."

Pan smacked him—_hard_, good lord—in the side in response, causing his attention to lay upon the raven-haired Saiya-jin instead. He arched a curious brow at her. "Somehow I'm shocked that _you _would be so concerned about me taking you out shopping. Did you turn into a girl while I wasn't looking, or are you—_fuck_, ouch!"

She smirked, looking satisfied that her swift punch to his arm would leave a mark, and shut him up before he'd had a chance to say any more. Bra shot her best friend an approving grin and had just opened her mouth to commend her when another, very familiar voice decided to join the conversation. Bra's mouth snapped shut almost instantaneously.

"That's a good question. Why _are _you acting like such a girl today, Pan?"

Pan rolled her eyes, glancing over Trunks' shoulder to regard her uncle disdainfully. "It's nice to see you too, Goten."

You know, even if they _were _just joking, it made a girl wonder why she even bothered sometimes. Just because she liked to fight and didn't think flouncing around in pink and frills was the epitome of fun, she was forever doomed to be considered a tomboy. Just because she wasn't a carbon copy of Bra and Marron did _not _mean she wasn't a girl, and it frustrated her to no end that everyone just wouldn't let it go. Even as she had gotten older, had begun to grow more into her body, and had stopped being so squeamish and averse to certain 'girly' things—_she _wore dresses, _she _went out dancing with friends, _she _read girl magazines, damn it—no one had taken the time to notice. Even if they had, she had the feeling that she'd still be made fun of.

Goten smirked and ruffled her hair, causing Pan to give off an audible sigh.

"For your information, I'm acting like 'such a girl' because it's a sure-fire way to annoy this jerk here," she explained tiredly, throwing a thumb in Trunks' direction, "who most recently decided that it would be funny to dye my hair _pink_, simply because I played a small, _harmless _water balloon prank on him."

Her uncle snickered in amusement, lazily throwing an arm around her shoulders and glancing up at Trunks in surprise. "You really dyed her hair pink? Brave move, man."

Trunks groaned, using his now free right hand to run over his face. "I know, I know," he muttered with a sigh. Perhaps he had been a little too hasty in his thought process concerning his retribution that time—if he knew Pan, she was going to make today nothing short of unbearable for him.

"See, you'd think that after so many arguments and personal wars he would recognize the placement of The Line and stop foolishly _crossing it_," Pan sighed towards Goten. "But I suppose he's just as stupid as he always has been."

"And I suppose you're just as irritating as you always have been," Trunks returned with an impish grin, feeling a slight rush at the glare that elicited from Pan. Anyone else that look could send cowering, but not him. He knew her well—not to mention that he was completely used to her glaring at him like that. In truth, riling up the younger Saiya-jin like that gave him a bit of a rush.

Bra snorted amusedly from beside the group and crossed her arms over her chest. "That is such a lie, Pan." Her tone was matter-of-fact. "My brother thinks you're just _great _all the rest of the time. You should hear him at dinner after days when you two have gone out and sparred." Oblivious to Trunks' growing mortification, she continued. "You're _all _he talks about! I think Daddy's ready to burst with all this talk about 'Kakkarot's third-class grand-'"

Pan didn't catch Trunks' face, but if the swift, panicked movement he made to silence his sister was any indicator, he was probably blushing just as bright red as she was.

Goten, the single bystander to this conversation, crossed his arms over his chest, taking no measures to attempt to look as if he wasn't enjoying this thoroughly. He was pretty sure that his brother wouldn't quite agree, but it was so hard to not laugh when you really knew the full truth of Bra's words. It was hard to miss, the chemistry between Trunks and his niece—some days Goten could have sworn Pan was more Trunks's best friend than he was. It seemed like ever since they had come back from their journey in space together just over five years ago, Pan and Trunks were hardly more than ten meters apart at any time.

But that enough of that. Pulled out of his thoughts by the blue-haired Saiya-jin's muffled yells, Goten observed that if he didn't break in there soon, Bra was going to get her pretty little head ripped straight off her shoulders by an extremely flustered big brother of hers.

"So, where are you guys off to anyway?" he chimed in loudly.

All too grateful for an excuse to change the topic, Pan answered swiftly. "We're going to the mall, out to eat—the usual. You want to tag along?"

Her best friend's suggestion had been enough to give Bra the power to wrestle—excitedly—out of Trunks' grip. You just couldn't keep her mouth shut for very long before she found a way to open it again, it seemed. "Yeah, come on, Goten!" she urged him with a positively glowing smile. "The more the merrier, right?"

Sometimes Pan wondered why Bra was so adamant that she not whisper a word of her crush on Goten. The girl did such a good job of advertising it in the silly way she acted every time she got within ten feet of him. Of course, it wasn't as if Goten was ever going to pick up on it, no matter how blatant Bra was about her affections. He was just as oblivious as he had been when he was a kid.

"Sure, sounds like fun!" he exclaimed.

Bra wasted no time upon his response to grab Goten's hand and pull him off towards the waiting car. Out of her corner of her eye, Pan caught Trunks' smirk and returned it full-force, a look of strict confidence and knowing passing between them. He held out his arm a moment later, offering it to her.

"Well, I suppose this means we're leaving," he said, chuckling quietly as he made one more glance after his lovesick sister and completely naïve best friend. Finally satisfied with the sight, he turned back to Pan and bowed dramatically. "Shall we join them, milady?"

Pan laughed as well and, with a flourish, linked her arm in his. "I think we had better, good sir, before your sister has an aneurysm," she joked. All the tension from Bra's earlier comments seemed to be broken as they walked amicably arm-in-arm together towards his car.

This would be a good day, Trunks thought just then. He could tell.

_**Briefs Household**_

_**( future timeline )**_

"Come on, you guys! Breakfast!"

Musume pulled her head back inside the kitchen window and hopped lightly off the counter, jogging over to where her mother was currently laying out plates of food. It was only a few moments later—if the prospect of food couldn't get a Saiya-jin family's attention, nothing could—before Gohan and Vegeta came bursting through the front door and nearly flew into their seats.

Trunks came in after them, taking a much more sedate pace as he threw a towel over his shoulders. He smiled as he watched them dig into their food, despite his wife's half-hearted attempts to get them to wait until everyone had been seated.

Both of them were progressing well in their training, Trunks noted in his head. If they kept up like they were going, they could become the two youngest Super Saiya-jins yet. Gohan and Vegeta were turning out to be excellent fighters for a couple of kids not even half-blooded Saiya-jins—Trunks had a feeling that even his father would have been proud of his grandsons.

Hah, Vegeta pleased. Now that was a funny thought.

"Smells delicious, Pan!" he complimented, giving her a kiss on the cheek as she finished setting out the remainder of what seemed like a thousand dishes of food. He had to give it to his wife—cooking for five Saiya-jins wasn't an easy feat, but she pulled it off spectacularly day after day.

He pulled out his chair at the head of the table and sat down, immediately making it obvious where his sons had inherited their table manners from. Pan and Musume ate at a normal pace—it had to be something about female Saiya-jins—while giving the males at the table glances mixed between disgust and amusement every so often.

As usual, the whole spread took no more than ten minutes to vanish, and Vegeta was the first to jump up from the table, followed by Gohan only a split second later. "Thanks Mom, thanks Musu," they each muttered quickly as they made their way back upstairs to change into their normal clothes.

The twins' excitement and non-stop energy would have been in character any day, but today was a particular cause for excitement for the Briefs children. The family was taking a trip back to the city, to Capsule Corp., today. It would be the first time that anyone would see the old building since Trunks had witnessed its destruction six years ago—it wouldn't be an easy pilgrimage to make for the family, but the children didn't know any difference. All they knew was that they were going to see the place their daddy had grown up, and Trunks was happy to have it that way.

He'd carried enough burden for a thousand lifetimes. He wasn't about to pass it down onto his sons and daughter.

As Musume finished and rushed upstairs after her brothers, Trunks let out the deep sigh he had been holding in and leaned back in his chair. This was not a matter of strength any longer; this was a matter of necessity. He had to go back. He had to visit his mother's lab. He needed to search out the one thing that he knew could save his family, and no ghosts were going to keep him away when he knew what he stood to lose.

He just wished it weren't so damn hard.

Pan reached out a comforting hand, squeezing her husband's arm supportively. She truly admired the way that he had managed to not let on his troubled disposition to the kids.

The truth was, however, it was a skill the both of them had been forced to adopt. Trunks and Pan tried their hardest to make every morning as peaceful and normal as possible, but times were bad, and most days it was a battle. In the past six years, the world in which they lived and raised their children had only deteriorated from the dismal state in which it had already been. Androids, two more of them, had emerged since Trunks had last destroyed what he had thought was a leftover, and the harsh truth was that they simply couldn't afford to fight them.

They simply didn't have the power to take out these monsters, as hard as that was to accept. Even more than that, however; they had responsibility—three kids that needed them alive.

With nine-tenths of the population of earth gone and the rest dwindling rapidly, though, it wasn't as if they had much left to protect. Nothing much except for themselves.

Originally, they had fought. The two of them would listen to the radio for news of an attack and fly off to once more be beaten into the ground—it was futile, but they were still trying. In the midst of their concern for humankind, however, they had neglected their duty as parents to protect their own brood.

Tragically, this realization was only made clear—crushingly so—when their youngest daughter, Ume, only a month old at the time, had been killed, right in front of their very eyes. All because they had taken their attention away from her for a split second.

That had been the last straw, and the only persuasion they needed to realize that they needed to get the hell out of there, and as soon as possible.

Trunks had brought up the idea of the time machine almost instantly. It was the obvious choice—apart from building themselves a spaceship and fleeing to space, blindly searching for a habitable, hospitable planet, removing themselves to a whole other timeline entirely was the only option in front of them. Apart from the repairs they would inevitably have to do on the machine, it was quick. It was their best—and possibly only—hope.

Running a hand back through lavender hair, Trunks shut his eyes tightly as he attempted to mentally prepare himself for what he was about to do. For once, his bad day wasn't going to be the fault of an android attack—somehow, though, he wasn't quite thanking Kami for that.

"You ready for this?" Pan's quiet voice pierced his thoughts and he opened his eyes again. Wordlessly, he reached out for her hand and pulled her gently into his lap. She smiled a faint, bittersweet smile, and rested her head on his shoulder as he wrapped tired arms around her.

"I hope so… I think so," he replied, and squeezed her lightly, burying his face in her raven hair. He breathed in deeply the fresh scent of jasmine and cherry blossoms, for a fleeting moment in time felt as if things would be alright.

And they would be, as long as she was at his side—that was the one thing he had left to truly believe in.

"I am."


	3. 02: Mishaps of the Time Traveling Kind

**A Place in Time**

**Chapter Two: Mishaps of the Time-Traveling Kind**

**Caelestis ****Kibeth**

_"You ready for this?" Pan's quiet voice pierced his thoughts and he opened his eyes again. Wordlessly, he reached out for her hand and pulled her gently into his lap. She smiled a faint, bittersweet smile, and rested her head on his shoulder as he wrapped tired arms around her._

_"I hope so… I think so," he replied, and squeezed her lightly, burying his face in her raven hair. He breathed in deeply the fresh scent of jasmine and cherry blossoms, and for a fleeting moment in time felt as if things would be alright._

_And they would be, as long as she was at his side—that was the one thing he had left to truly believe in._

_"I am."_

_**Capsule Corporation**_

**_( future_ **_**timeline )  
**_

"What a mess."

Trunks muttered a noise of quiet agreement at Pan's words, as if distracted by something. The truth was that, at present, Trunks was only half-listening to his wife's mumbles about the state of his mother's lab. It wasn't like he was missing much pertinent information anyway—she'd repeated several variations on the same sentence, with varying degrees of incredulity, about a thousand times since they'd arrived.

The hours seemed to drag on longer the more time he spent in this place. Trunks was getting anxious, and found himself agitatedly wishing that his wife would just work some miracle and find the stupid blueprints already; it wasn't like they could get out of there any sooner for it, but it would at least _feel _like they were dwindling down their time a little more.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, tuning in to the soft patter of footsteps in rooms above. Musume, Gohan, and Vegeta had gone off to go find something to entertain themselves with hours ago, and oh how Trunks wished that he could be them right then—carefree, oblivious, happy… The emotional impact of this trip upon him was more than even he had anticipated, and as guilty as the thought made him feel, how he still longed for this to not be so difficult.

Difficult it was, however, and nothing was going to change that. At least he could thank the fact that, despite his emotions constantly threatening to bubble over due to his current surroundings, he had managed to not project himself. Or, well—Pan was all too aware of the pain he was going through, but at least the _kids_ hadn't seemed to pick up on it yet. That was something.

_It was something_. That's what he had been attempting to convince himself of for the past four hours straight. It was the only safe thought he had left to think as he sat there, still as stone, leaned back casually—and yet with such an uncomfortable stiffness—in one of his mother's old desk chairs.

Eager for something to do that wasn't moping, cerulean eyes scanned the walls of the half-demolished workroom, halting on a series of broken pictures hanging precariously in every which way. There were ten or twelve in all, but three in particular caught the Saiya-jin's attention, and he immediately cursed himself for looking—Kami damn it all, this was _not _helping. And yet, like a bad speeder crash, he found that he couldn't divert his gaze.

The first hung over the computer, and Trunks recognized it instantly. It had been his mother's favorite picture, and it was only appropriate that he would find it here—she had been adamant about keeping it close to her at all times. That picture, of a young version of his mother and Vegeta, had been the earliest glimpse that Trunks could remember seeing of his father. Even though he looked positively furious—probably because of the cutesy way Bulma was hanging off of him mixed with the threat of the suspicious camera device—and altogether not like the nurturing, kind man Trunks had imagined during the naïveté of his early childhood, he had instantly known that he was his father, hardened expression and all.

It was a good thing that he had so easily accepted that expression, because he had never managed to see another.

The second photograph again held an unfamiliarly youthful face of his mother, except this one was not cheek-to-cheek with Vegeta's. Instead, she was sitting up in bed, alone but for a slumbering lavender-haired infant nestled snugly in her arms. Trunks felt a rush of grim nostalgia and turned his eyes away swiftly. That joy and adoration that swan in the young Bulma's eyes was too much to take—no matter how far he had come from beating himself up over her death, it was _so_ difficult to lay eyes upon that photograph and know that in twenty-three years, that infant that she so adored was going to be the cause of her death.

Shaking his head to try and free the thoughts from his mind—Pan wouldn't be pleased with him if she caught him thinking such things—Trunks's eyes tore themselves away and towards the third photo. A soothing wave of relief overcame him as he saw which photo the last was. This photo… this one he liked.

It had been a favorite between himself and his mother, despite the fact that she hadn't even been around when it was taken; because it had been taken in the past. Standing in front of a pristine and unmarred Capsule Corporation was a large group of people—in his mind, Trunks named them all off one by one; Gohan, Goku, Tien, Chaotzu, Yamcha, Piccolo, ChiChi, Krillin, his parents, and then himself. Despite the android threat that had been hanging over all of their heads at the time, a smile was missing from no face-well, except for his father's, of course. But a trained eye could tell that even the great Prince of Saiya-jin's stance wasn't less tight and militaristic than usual.

When he had come back to his own timeline once and for all, that photograph was one of the first things he had given his mother. He remembered the way she'd cried, and when he asked her why, how she had simply pointed to herself, standing happily next to Vegeta, with a tiny baby in between them.

His mother hadn't been crying out of sadness, Trunks realized, but the overwhelming satisfaction that she had felt when she realized that she had managed to help prevent the hell that they had gone through for a future generation. That she had helped give at least one of her sons a father.

Trunks pursed his lips for a moment, and then suddenly stood up from his seat, lifting that particular picture off the wall.

Startled by his sudden activity, Pan looked up at him confusedly. "What's that?" she asked him, setting down the stack of blueprints in her hands.

"This is where we need to go," he told her definitively. Trunks pulled the photograph from its broken frame and handed it to her. "This is around the time that I left. If we can make it there, I'll still be too young for it to mess up my life. We can remove ourselves far from our past selves before they know any difference."

Pan nodded in understanding. "I think you're right. But we'll have to be careful to time things just right. If we go too far into the past, we'll be in even more trouble than we already are—I don't think either of us wants to go face-to-face with Cell." She handed back the picture and crossed her arms, making a quiet, thoughtful sound. "And if we miscalculate and go too far into the _future_, like you said—we're prone to really screw up our past selves' lives. Not to mention the flow of time."

Trunks held out a hand to his wife to help her off the floor and wrapped an arm around her shoulders as they both turned to regard the large time machine sitting in the middle of the room. It was the second model, the main project that Bulma had been working on prior to her death. This version was a deal more sophisticated than the one he had piloted, with more passenger room and far more advanced controls. Truthfully, the machine was nearly completed in and of itself—their real challenge laid in replacing any damaged parts and actually learning how to use it.

Pan shifted, moving away from him to go up closer to the machine. She had inspected it twenty times over already and still—the technology was such an enigma to her that she felt that she couldn't get enough of it. "So what do you remember of the old time machine?" she asked her husband, turning over her shoulder. "Or do you know where it is? Maybe if we could compare the two…"

"Sure, I do," he replied, blinking in surprise at himself for not having thought of that before. Trunks made a beeline towards the largest of his mother's desk drawers and produced a yellow container. "She always kept it in one of these capsules," he muttered, mostly to himself, as he opened up the box and ran his eyes over the contents. Finally, he picked out a purple and white capsule and tossed it to Pan. "Here."

She caught it with ease and held it up close to her eyes to read the tiny type on the label. "Tee-em-vee-one-point-five-point-two-bee-bee-cee?" she asked dubiously. "How the hell do you know it's this one?"

"My mother always had a very specific labeling system," Trunks explained, dismissing the question with a wave of the hand. "'Time Machine, Version 1.5.2, Briefs Bulma: Creator.'"

"Right." In Pan's opinion, it would have been easier to slap that on it. But then again, who was she to question the labeling system of one of the greatest inventors the earth had ever seen? "Well, here goes nothing."

She clicked the release on the capsule and tossed it to an empty area, where it instantly disappeared in a cloud of grey smoke. When the air cleared, the tiny storage device was gone and in its place was a very old, very rusted, vine-covered version of the time machine they had been looking at moments before.

Pan was the first to step towards it, taking a graceful, augmented leap into the open cockpit. Trunks watched as she threw off some of the accumulated greenery, nose scrunched in distaste. "Sorry," he apologized with a small smirk as he narrowly dodged a discarded vine. "We didn't really ever get around to cleaning it up, I guess."

She shook her head and slid down into the pilot's seat, having managed to clear off enough of the mess to see the heavily rusted control board. "Does anything even work on this thing any more?"

He shrugged, taking a few steps closer. "I doubt it. Either way, even if the system's not in total disrepair, it's not like the thing has enough energy to go far. Mom just kept it around as a keepsake, a testament to her hard work. She was pretty proud of it."

"No shit," Pan muttered in slight awe. Her hands grazed over the controls gingerly as she stared in amazement, like a kid with a brand new toy. "I still can't believe she managed to get it to work, I mean—it's a _time machine_, I—"

Trunks laughed quietly and nodded. "Yeah, that was basically my first thought too."

He stood content to let her fiddle and play for a few more moments before he spoke up again. "Alright, so we've got the machines and we've almost found all the blueprints," he began. Taking her cue, Pan jumped down—reluctantly—and joined him back on the floor. "How long do you think it'll take to—"

Before Trunks could finish his sentence, he was cut off by the sound of an explosion from above. Pan, stunned, instinctively reached out to grab onto his arm as the building shook violently around them. The ceiling and walls rained rubble down upon their heads, which darted every which way, glances mixed of fear and surprise.

"What the hell was that?" He was the first one to voice what they were both thinking.

"I don't know," Pan replied, the worry heavy in her voice. She closed her eyes, for a moment attempting to search out the children's ki signatures, but her concentration was killed stone dead when another, louder explosion sounded from the same area. This time, both of them nearly fell over, and Trunks had to exert himself to brace his feet into the ground. "We have to go!" Pan yelled at him over the rumbling of the house. "The kids are up there, Trunks!"

He had already known that, but he cursed anyway as they took off running, side by side, out of the basement lab. The only thought in Trunks' mind was that he was going to massacre those fucking androids—oh yes, he could feel their ki now—if they even dared to lay a finger on any of his kids.

Flaring his own ki, he sprinted through those corridors faster than he ever had in his life.

* * *

"Gohan, I'm scared," Musume whispered to her younger brother, voice trembling. She had a hand fisted tightly in the cloth of his uniform while her other clamped onto Vegeta's in something resembling a death grip.

The hallway was dark. She _hated _the dark.

Gohan barely hid a growl of frustration. "I _know_," he told her, voice uncharacteristically serious for a boy of only four. That was what happened when you were born into an all-out war zone. His everyday mask of a carefree and happy-go-lucky kid was only one half of his personality-the boy his parents wanted he and his brother to be. In reality, the other half, the part that forced him to be tough, alert, serious, _ready_... That part was tapped into far more often. It had to be. If they weren't serious, they were dead.

Gohan frowned and squinted his eyes, trying to make them adjust to the pitch blackness around them. This was not good. This was not good at all.

When the first explosion had come, their gut instinct had been to run. The only problem was that none of them had any idea where they were actually going—oh, right. And the electricity had failed.

Vegeta sighed and let his free hand graze along the walls, trying to get a feeling for whatever hallway they were in. Abruptly, he stopped, causing Musume and Gohan to be pulled back into a halt. "Wait," he said quietly. His hand groped a bit further, and he was soon certain of what he was feeling. "There's a door here."

He felt it as his siblings moved to look in the direction from which his voice had come and they all stood there for a long moment, their eyes slowly adjusting enough to make out the outline of the door Vegeta had been talking about. A little longer and he could barely see a small plate above the frame, but it was still far too dark to tell what was written there.

"Should we go in?" Musume ventured finally, and both her brothers could hear the uncertain frown in her voice. "What if it just brings us closer to those—"

"Ssh!" Gohan suddenly hushed her and she could feel his muscles tense up against her hand. All three fell into a deathly silence, only to be broken by a miniscule whisper of Gohan's next instructions. "Lower your ki signatures," he told them, and he was relieved to feel them instantly comply without question.

No more than a second later, Vegeta and Musume's ears perked up, and they began to hear what Gohan must have been hearing before. It was the sound of footsteps, metal clanking heavily against metal, and they were getting louder by the second.

"Let's go!" It was Gohan who whispered again, this time sounding a bit frantic as he nodded his head to Vegeta. His twin hit the control panel on the wall, but instead of the expected _swoosh _of the door opening, nothing came.

Musume whimpered and Vegeta made a small growl of frustration. "Probably a security system," he said. "We're going to have to bust it down ourselves."

"But they'll know where we are!" Musume whispered harshly. "That'll make so much noise!"

Gohan gave off something between a growl and a hiss and spun towards his sister. "Not as much noise as you're making right now!" he snapped. He felt a twinge of guilt when Musume stepped back and turned her head down in shame, but there was no time for apologies at the moment. They had to figure out what they were going to do, and fast—the footsteps weren't more than fifty meters away by now.

Turning to Vegeta, he set his mouth into a grim line. "You think we should we try it?" Vegeta nodded in return, in between making glances over his shoulder at the source of the noise. Gohan pried Musume's hand off of his shirt and faced the door again, Vegeta doing the same. The young girl scurried to stand behind them as they crouched down, preparing to attack.

Both attempting to hide their hesitation, the brothers took off and rammed the door at full force. The metal piece flew off its hinges and went clanging into the room, sending the deafening sound resounding throughout the hallways. Even through the ringing in their ears, however, they could still pick up on another metallic sound—that ominous metal-against-metal, picking up pace drastically.

Musume rushed into the room after her brothers, shaking and scuttling faster than she imagined she ever had, while Gohan and Vegeta grabbed up the mangled steel door and pushed it back up against its frame. Vegeta, holding his hand out, shot a white-hot ki blast along the edges, successfully welding the pieces to the wall. It wasn't as if it would hold off androids, but it was at least one extra obstacle to deal with.

Seconds were precious—that was what their father always preached during training.

This room was lit naturally, as opposed to the darkened hallway they had come from. Looking up, a line of windows stretched across the curve of the room near the ceiling, throwing dim light from outside down onto their surroundings.

All at once, their eyes were drawn to a huge, complex-seeming pair of machines sitting in the middle of the room. One was dirty, overgrown with some sort of vines, and looked something like a mechanical insect, with legs sprouting out and supporting the bulbous main piece. The other resembled it almost exactly, except that it was nearly twice as large and appeared to be much less worn. Around the latter's base were papers and blueprints of all sorts; they looked like they had been sorted through recently and left there in a hurry. Across the room was a desk that wrapped around nearly half of the room, upon which was scattered a vast array of capsules, mixed in with tools and other assorted objects.

"I think we're in Grandma Bulma's lab, guys," Vegeta inferred. They had been there when they first arrived, for a few minutes at least, but the power had been on—and those huge machines had definitely not been there before.

If the others had heard, they didn't acknowledge it. Gohan was preoccupied being the first one to wander over to the smaller of the machines. Raising up a small hand, he brushed it against the metal, but jumped back instantly as the glass roof flew open at his touch.

"Wh-what is this thing?" he asked no one in particular. "Is this the machine Mama and Papa were working on?

Musume frowned and looked at the grubby object in distaste. "Well, they sure didn't do a very good job if it is."

Now Gohan frowned as well. "Yeah, I guess so," he admitted. "Maybe it isn't the one after—" The boy stopped mid-sentence as all of the kids' sensitive Saiya-jin hearing picked up on the sound of footsteps once more, now located just outside the doorway. In the midst of their curiosity over the lab, it seemed as if they had momentarily forgotten just why they were there in the first place.

For the umpteenth time that day Musume whimpered and grabbed onto Gohan, whose onyx eyes became hard and serious once more. Vegeta took on a relatively indifferent stance—_he _had been paying attention the whole time, unlike his siblings.

"So, I'm thinking that hiding might be a good idea right now," he suggested nonchalantly.

Musume nodded wildly in agreement and her eyes darted around for a place to hide. The footsteps had stopped, and there was a loud banging on the patched door—they were trying to knock it down with minimal effort, it seemed, but Vegeta's work with the ki blast was holding strong. He might have gloated, had the situation been any less dire.

Gohan, pulling himself away from Musume—Kami, she _had _to stop doing that—ran over to rummage through the cabinets, but each was loaded with things. It would take far too much time to clear three of them out and then hide away inside. Turning away with a frustrated growl, he looked around to see if there were any other possibilities. It was too bad they couldn't just—_wait_—

"Guys, up here!" he shouted as he took off of the ground and hovered over the open roof of the smaller insect-machine. Vegeta and Musume looked up in time to watch their brother release his ki and fall into the single seat. They understood instantly, and both jumped up to join Gohan in the cramped cockpit, wasting no breath on words of affirmation or discomfort.

Gohan began pressing buttons and turning knobs wildly. He had no idea which one would close the capsule's roof, but as the banging grew louder, he became less and less concerned with what any of them could do.

And then, just as they felt the impact of the door flying off into the wall beside them, Gohan brought his hand down on a large, green button and something responded. The top closed wish a rush of air and all three children shut their eyes tightly as their surroundings behind the glass disappeared into a brilliant white. With a great jerk, they were thrown back quite unexpectedly into the hard seat.

Each saw stars explode behind their closed eyelids, and then nothing at all.

_**Capsule Corporation**_

**_( present_ **_**timeline )  
**_

"WOMAN!"

It was the voice of none other than the Prince of Saiya-jins that shook the Briefs' household—_as per usual_, Bulma thought in annoyance. Choosing to ignore him, she continued on with her work, all the while listening to the loud steps make their way towards the basement stairs and counting down in her head the seconds until he screamed again.

Five, four, three, two…

"_WOMAN_, ANSWER ME!"

Bulma let out a scream of agitation and threw open her lab door, coming face-to-face with Vegeta's equally stubborn glare. "_WHAT_ DO YOU _WANT_!?" she screamed back, despite being less than two feet from him. It would hurt his sensitive ears, that was for sure—but it served him right, thinking he could barge in on her while she was working, yelling at her like some servant of his. Honestly, the _nerve _of him some days! "I AM _WORKING_!"

The only way Vegeta managed not to twitch or wince at her voice was through sheer stubbornness—and a bit of conditioning throughout the years. He crossed his arms over his chest and scoffed, but lowered his own voice to normal level strategically, hoping she would do the same. "Well put your things aside! I need to know where the boy has gone!"

"He is _outside_, Your Highness, if you would care enough to go and _look_!" she answered, exasperated. "You're out there half of the time anyway, so I don't know how you didn't notice."

"Don't accuse me of laziness, woman, don't you think I _have_ looked?" he answered sharply. "He's not there."

Bulma frowned for a moment and her stance relaxed momentarily as she tried to think—then, as if a lightbulb went off in her head, she immediately amended herself. "Oh, right," she said. "He called me a while ago and told me he was out with his friends." Her expression changed quickly back to an accusing glare at her mate as she added, "I must have forgotten, what with all these repairs to the _Gravity Room_ I've had to make."

Vegeta ignored her—always bitching about the Gravity Room; it wasn't _his _fault she kept creating inferior machines—and merely continued to look altogether agitated. "Which friends is the brat with?" he pursued the former topic.

Bulma shot him an accusing glance. "Goten, Pan, and his sister—who _else_, honestly? Some days I think you don't pay any attention at all."

He growled at the mention of Goten and Pan, but refrained from making his normal speech about 'Kakkarot's third-class spawn' and how fraternizing with them in public was unfitting of their family. Instead, he spun around swiftly on his heel and stalked off in the opposite direction determinedly.

She halted the prince with a voice of harsh warning and planted her hands on her hips. "Vegeta, I know what you're thinking, and I'm not going to have it. Don't you _dare _go off and disturb Trunks and Bra on their day out! Trunks has the day off work and he's spending it with his sister, which is rare enough in and of itself," she scolded. "Let your kids alone before they start to think you don't want them having any fun."

"I _don't _want them having any fun!" he answered defiantly, turning around to look at her again. "At least not the boy; he should be training! He's been growing soft since you gave him that damn job, woman! Saiya-jins aren't meant to live pushing papers!"

"Well, for your information, Mister, Trunks is half _human _too, which gives me just as much right to make him push papers and it gives you to make him fight!" she retorted. They'd had this argument probably a thousand times before—it was almost like reciting lines for a play any more, and she had memorized hers well. "Or would you rather I have some stranger running the company who could cheat us out of our fortune? Where would you be teaching him to fight, then? Because I can give you a hint—there wouldn't be a Gravity Room to escape into!"

"Hn," was all he gave in response and Bulma smirked. He had lost once again.

"That's what I thought," she said smugly. Without another word to him, Bulma turned back in to her lab.

Vegeta, now quite a deal more irritated than before, turned around. He had just begun to stalk up towards the kitchen when he heard a shocked yell emanate from the direction in which his mate had just walked.

_**West City Mall**_

**_( present_ **_**timeline )  
**_

"Where to next, guys?"

Goten, Trunks, and Pan stared after Bra as she chirped out her question, each looking more disdainful than the last. Pan, who had originally been determined to play along and be obnoxious about this shopping trip, now looked the most worn out and ready to leave—it was a fucking bust, this whole girly act. She just couldn't keep up with her best friend when she was in her natural habitat.

Trunks groaned, running a hand over his face. "You can't be serious, Bra," he muttered. "I didn't even think there was a store we haven't been to yet today."

"Don't be silly, Trunks!" she replied, apparently either ignoring or oblivious to his tone of voice. "We've hardly even touched upon the load of stuff we need to still buy for Pan's birthday party next week!"

It was Pan's turn to groan. "She means _her_ party, which I am conveniently attending on the day of my birthday," she informed the two men beside her. Bra didn't hear a thing, but seeing as the blue-haired girl hadn't caught onto any of her aversion to the idea of planning such an event any time within the past few weeks, it was difficult to believe she would now.

Goten laughed. "What, you mean she's planning your party and managing to do it without a death match with Mom first?" he asked.

Pan shook her head. "Oh no, Grandma came to me at least a month ago with plans. I just haven't told her about Bra's plans yet, in order to postpone said death match for as long as possible." She smirked. "I'm kind of hoping they could get into it at the party—_something's _got to make it interesting."

"And it simply wouldn't be a Saiya-jin party if there wasn't a little bloodshed," Trunks inserted.

"I just hope they don't scare away any of your friends," Goten said. The Son and Briefs families weren't exactly known for their successful attempts at hiding their powers in front of others, after all, and he could only imagine—with great amusement, of course—what Pan's human friends might think of her grandmother and best friend being throwing each other through the living room window.

Trunks shoved his hands in his pockets as they continued to walk. "I'm more worried about what they're going to think of Piccolo," he said, still smirking. "He's been known to send a person or two running in abject terror, whether it's because of his strength or just his green skin."

Bra fell back into the conversation just then, crossing her arms across her chest. "That's exactly like it is with Daddy. Last time I brought friends over, he was on one of his rampages about the Gravity Room being broken—came in cursing up a storm and yelling at Mom, broke a few vases when she started arguing back at him…"

"It was hilarious," Trunks continued from where she left off, laughing at the memory. "They left so fast I barely saw them go."

Pan grinned. As much as she was over at Capsule Corp., she was used to Vegeta and his frequent 'conniption fits,' as Bulma called them. When Trunks wasn't around, she was sometimes even the one he sparred with to get out his anger. Vegeta didn't scare her anymore—but then again, it wasn't all that out of the ordinary for her to see household items demolished on any given day over there. There was that little part about her being a Saiya-jin, too.

The strange shit you became accustomed to came with the blood.

"Well, I hope they recover soon," Goten commented. "I would hate to see Bra lose all her friends because you guys have Vegeta for a dad."

Bra slipped back into the group, walking alongside them now. "You're lucky, Pan; your dad acts like a normal person. I love Daddy to pieces, but I'm going to have to have a talk with him if doesn't stop scaring everyone off."

She pouted and Trunks had to chuckle at his sister. He knew all too well after eighteen years that if Bra wished it to be, Vegeta made it that way. It was different with him because he was the boy—his life had always been stricter. But Bra—oh no, _she_ was his darling daughter, his little princess, and he would go to the ends of the universe to make her happy.

He would do anything for Trunks, too, of course. It just wasn't quite the same concept.

His thoughts were interrupted by the ring of a cell phone, and Trunks immediately recognized the tune as something only his sister wouldn't be embarrassed having sing from her phone. She flipped it open and he diverted his attention, disinterested—it was probably some boy or another—until his ears picked up on the shaken voice on the other end of the line.

"Bra, baby. Where are you and Trunks?" It was their mother.

Interest piqued, all three of them tuned into the conversation, stopping in their walk as Bra continued to talk to Bulma. "We're still at the mall. What's wrong?"

"There are—a—well, I'll tell you when you get home. Just _get _home."

Bra's brow creased at the anxiousness in her mother's voice. "Alright, Mama, we'll be there soon."

She flipped the phone off and gave Trunks a wordless message in her look. He nodded, and turned to Goten and Pan. "You guys don't mind flying home, do you? Sounds urgent."

"No problem," Goten replied as Trunks reached into his pocket to dig out his car keys. "It was nice to go out with you again."

"See you tomorrow?" Pan asked Bra, who nodded distractedly. She gave her friend a single, quick hug before following Trunks quickly towards the parking lot.

Still feeling perplexed and anxious, both of the Briefs children slid into the car, neither prepared for what awaited them at home.

* * *

**A/N: **Wow, I totally meant to do an Author's Note for the last chapter—sorry about that! I didn't realize I'd forgotten until I posted it up, so I figured I'd just put one in here for you, encompassing the prologue and these two chapters both. Anyway, let's get down to business here.

First off, I've had a lot of questions about whether or not I'll still be continuing the first version of this story. The simple answer is _no,_ I am not. As I explained, I wrote the first version of this four years ago, at which time my writing was nothing short of atrocious. I did a lot of things with the story that I no longer agree with, and that will account for any 'major' plot changes I've made (such as making Kaeida the dead baby and nixing her twin entirely). I think, in the long run, they make the main plot much clearer and easier to focus on. Once I've finished re-writing chapter five of this story, I'll continue on _here_, as continuing on with the old version would be, to put it bluntly, asinine.

That said, I do hope you all are actually reading this version and not just going back and reading through the first version. A lot has changed, and if you start on chapter six here, with only the background knowledge of version one, you're likely going to be very confused. Not to mention I'm ashamed of how badly written version one was and don't want anyone reading it, haha.

Also, AND THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT—I would be so, SO grateful to you guys if you'd review and tell me what you think! I know I'm getting hits on this story thanks to the FFnet's nifty Stats page, but only a few people have reviewed me. Not only is it nice to get some feedback on how I'm doing, but it's nice to feel appreciated once in a while—reviewers often compel writers to continue writing, so COMPEL ME! (:

And now, appropriately—

**REVIEWER RESPONSES: **

_Karen;_It's true that I put a lot of thought into how to rewrite my prologue—that was the biggest hurdle I've had so far—and I'm so glad to hear that it's come through in the end result. Thank you so much for that; it made my day!

_KAI/THE/RAG/DOLL; _I'm really glad that you feel like I've gotten a grasp on Mirai Trunks. He's one of my favorite characters, so I think I might have had to weep in shame if someone told me I had messed him up, haha. Such an interesting personality to explore, really—he's riveting as a character. (: Keep reviewing!

_NiceNipps; _Well, I hope you'll enjoy this one even more, since I think it's obviously my better version. Definitely keep reading, and thanks for the review!

_Pan-chan34; _Wow, what a nice review! I'm so glad to hear that you're enjoying this version. I'll try my best not to disappoint you as I continue my re-writing. (:


	4. 03: Revelations

**A Place in Time**

**Chapter Three: Revelations**

**Caelestis Kibeth**

_[Bra] flipped the phone off and gave Trunks a wordless message in her look. He nodded, and turned to Goten and Pan. "You guys don't mind flying home, do you? It sounds like it's urgent."_

"_No problem," Goten replied as Trunks reached into his pocket to dig out his car keys. "It was nice to go out with you again."_

"_See you tomorrow?" Pan asked Bra, who nodded distractedly. She gave her friend a single, quick hug before following Trunks quickly towards the parking lot._

_Still feeling perplexed and anxious, both of the Briefs children slid into the car, neither prepared for what awaited them at home._

_**Capsule Corporation**_

_**( present timeline )**_

"Who are they?"

"You sure got me."

"No idea. I leave the lab for a split second, and then walk back in to find three toddlers and a time machine crashed in the middle of my workspace. I mean, I'm pretty taken aback myself here."

"That's been established sufficiently already. Must you really _reiterate_ your confusion?"

"Must _you _really be such a sarcastic ass, Vegeta?"

"Hn."

"Well, we'll just have to wait for them to wake up, then."

"_I'll _wake them up-"

"Papa, _stop_—oh, hey, speak of the devil-"

The rest of the family turned towards the bed upon which they had laid the three mysterious subjects of their conversation just in time to catch one pair of cerulean eyes flutter open groggily-it was the smallest of the trio, a twin tailed, raven-haired girl. A tiny hand went up to rub her forehead and she groaned, sitting up slowly. Her movement seemed to stir the two boys, who were soon mimicking their female companion's motions.

"Where are we?" the little girl asked, innocent voice full of wonder. She only regarded the other two toddlers, not yet noticing the other presences in the room. "What happened to the bad guy?"

Bra had opened her mouth to respond to her question when she was interrupted in her efforts by one of the boy's voices; the one with the haircut that looked strangely similar to those of Goku and Goten, when the former had been alive and the latter had been in his youth.

"I dunno, Musu," he said, moving over so that he was in front of both her and the other boy. "Maybe we got him?"

"No way," the other second boy said, dashing the look of hope which had flashed across his sister's face. "If Mama and Papa couldn't beat it in all those times, we definitely didn't beat it…"

"But we might—"

Finally getting sick of all the-to him-nonsensical blabbering, Vegeta exploded. "What in Kami's name are you brats talking about!?" he hollered suddenly. Bulma's head spun around to shoot her husband a scalding glare.

"_Vegeta_, be nice! You'll scare them!"

It was not the man's scream that finally alerted the children to the presence of others in the room, but Bulma's reprimand. The Goku-esque boy looked particularly alarmed, a baffled expression overtaking his features. "I didn't do it!" he rushed to proclaim.

Bulma narrowed her eyes for a moment, then shook her head and waved her hand at the air. "Oh, honey, I know. I was talking to Vegeta."

The tiny boy shot her a look that clearly read of what he thought of her level of intelligence. "Right," he spoke slowly, as if to aid her in understanding. Bulma looked somewhat taken aback at his tone—how old was this kid again? And he was talking to her like _she_ was the preschooler? "I _am _Vegeta."

"_No_, I was talking to-wait, what?"

The scientist, who had been halfway turned around to motion in the direction of her mate, had to turn back to do a double-take of the little boy. Bulma's brow furrowed in bewilderment. Slowly this time, she twisted her gaze towards her husband, then back to the boy, then once again towards both. "_You're_ Vegeta?"

"Well duh! I only said it like, twice already!"

As Bulma continued to process this idea of two Vegetas in her head, the elder appeared to be more agitated than fazed. "Stop this foolishness, brat!" he snapped, stalking forward to lean into the other's face with a scrutinizing glare. Bra, who had been up and ready to stop her father before he actually hurt the poor boy, stopped in her tracks—somehow, the toddler hadn't so much as flinched. "Vegeta is the royal name of the Saiya-jin prince, not a name to be given to some low-class human weakling!"

Musume, stepping to her brother's defense, rose to her feet on the bed—a gesture which brought her up to Vegeta's height—and crossed her arms over her chest. "Hey, you shouldn't be so full of yourself!" she said with a glare that nearly matched the older man's. "Our _daddy_ is the Saiya-jin prince and _he _gave Vegeta that name!"

Her eyes turned equally as scrutinizing as his had been just moments earlier. Vegeta narrowed his own eyes back at her, fighting the sudden and uncharacteristic urge to recoil slightly as she stabbed a finger in his face. "I don't know who you are, but you're not the prince, you imposter!"

Vegeta's face began to paint a heavy crimson and Bulma knew only too well what that meant. "Wait, wait, wait!" she exclaimed hurriedly, forcing herself back into the conversation. She stepped forward and put a hand to Vegeta's chest to stop him from lunging at 'Musu,' the cogs of her mind working to form a hypothesis even as she took action.

She turned towards the raven-haired girl, maneuvering her body in between her and her husband. "How do you kids know about the Saiya-jin?" she asked. Bulma attempted to show the girl as calm a smile as she possibly could, given the situation at hand.

Musume stuck her tongue out at Vegeta from over Bulma's shoulder for a full five seconds before looking back at the woman to give her an answer. This woman seemed much nicer than the fake Vegeta, and her level of comfort shone through in her suddenly patient tone. "Because we _are _Saiya-jin, of course!" she answered freely.

Seemingly oblivious to the wide-eyed stares that each occupant of the room had just very suddenly given the three children, Musume began to ramble away. "Our papa is the prince, and he told us that even though we're all part human that we should be proud of being from the royal line because our grandpa would have wanted us to uphold the honor of the family-our grandpa died a long time ago and stuff, but Grandma always taught Daddy when he was younger that he should be proud like that-Grandma died a long time ago too, and we didn't know her, and actually we were just at her old house before we ended up here because we were being chased by the bad guys; it's a really scary story actually and-"

"Will you _SHUT UP_!" The roar came from Vegeta, who was the first to recover from the shock of the little girl's first statement enough to halt her continuous talking spree. Musume shut her mouth instantly, but glared at him and gave a huff of indignation.

"Well, you _asked_!"

Trunks shook his head from where he stood, tiredly leaning against the wall and still trying to process the onslaught of information Musume had just thrown at them. "Where do you guys come from?" he asked incredulously. "Some—alternate universe or something?"

He straightened up for the first time and lifted himself out of the far corner of the room. As his face was released from the cover of shadow, a loud-pitched squeal that no one had been expecting suddenly filled the air.

"PAPA!"

Before Trunks knew what was happening, the girl that had just a split second ago been on the bed was now clamped onto his leg. He blinked down at her, completely unsure of what had just occured and looking slightly frantic-had she just called him _Papa_?

"Hey—hey, sorry, kid, but you've got me mistaken," he stuttered out quickly. Trunks put a hand on her arm to try and pry her off of him, but the girl's hold was solid—maybe she was telling the truth about being part Saiya-jin after all. "I don't even have a steady _girlfriend_, much less any kids! You can't be my daughter, I've never even seen you before!"

Instantly, Trunks felt the blood circulation return to his leg as Musume's hold slackened, and he glanced down only to be greeted by a look of hurt and confusion etched in her bright blue eyes.

Cerulean eyes. _Eyes like mine_, came the heart-stopping thought.

Thankfully, however, his mind couldn't linger on that disturbing idea for long. Bra, who had like him been standing on the sidelines for much of the scene, stepped forward and took the eerily _him_-like little girl by the hand. She shot her older brother a glare.

"Honestly, Trunks, what a thing to say. Look, now you've upset her!"

"But it's true!" he answered with an exasperated yell.

Bra shook her head. "So? She's a little kid!" Musume now hugged onto Bra's leg instead, still looking at Trunks as if he'd uttered a horrible curse at her. "Obviously they're scared and confused and in a strange place. She thought you were someone familiar, you could have given her at least a few seconds to think it!"

"Bra!" Trunks exclaimed, eyes wide at his sister's mind-boggling logic. "I'm _not _their father! I can't just let them think that when it's not true!"

Bra was about to open her mouth to argue, but one of the boys on the bed beat her to it—the one whose resemblance to Goku was still hanging heavily in the air, unspoken. "But you _are _our dad!"

"We're not crazy!" the other boy piped up.

Trunks once again froze up as he noticed that this second one had a hairstyle that looked alarmingly like his own, and for a second he wondered if they weren't telling the truth. But—that was impossible, he reminded himself. He had been with a lot of different women, as many as you'd expect from a man who was both in his early thirties and the world's most eligible bachelor—but he would have _known _if he'd fathered any children.

…_right?_

The boy continued on, seemingly oblivious to his blank, numb stare. "My name is Gohan and this is my twin Vegeta and that's my older sister Musume and I know that _you're _our dad!"

"-_Gohan_? Did you say _Gohan_?"

Bulma blinked a few times in rapid succession, and Gohan turned to her with an arched brow. "Um, yeah?" he answered, and silently hoped that the angry man that the nice-but-empty-headed lady called Vegeta—a fact still up for debate—wasn't going to rush over and get in his face about _his _name too.

"Alright." Bulma smiled suddenly clapped her hands together once, definitively. Everyone turned simultaneously to watch this change in pace unfold. They certainly could use a break from all the confusion.

The blue-haired scientist nodded, and the self-satisfied look on her face said that she was beginning to piece together the puzzle. She stepped towards the bed and sat down on the edge next to the twins, shooting them a reassuring smile before twisting her head back to her expectant family. "Call me crazy, but I think they might be telling the truth."

"WHAT!?"

The unison reaction was powerful, and even the kids were in on it this time. Someone finally _believed _them? Maybe this woman wasn't so dense after all.

"But Mom, I—I _swear_ I don't—"

"Oh my _god_, do you know something about Trunks that we—"

"Woman, explain this!"

"Hold your horses, geez!" Bulma rushed to butt in, waving her hands to quiet all the separate strings of yells bombarding her. To her surprise, they all—even Vegeta—quieted down instantly, each too driven by their interest in finding out what in the world was going on to protest giving her the floor.

Bulma took a deep breath and regarded her family seriously. "Think about it for a second and you'll figure it out too… We found the three of them in a time machine, didn't we?"

As soon as she brought up that quickly forgotten piece of information, a tense silence fell over the group. None of them seemed certain how to react—even Bra, who seemed to have a never-ending well of words to draw from, was absolutely frozen in surprise. It was Vegeta the Younger, in the end, who was the first to speak up.

"Wait… you found us in the time machine?"

Bulma turned to him and laughed lightly. "Found you? You three crashed in the middle of my lab!"

The siblings exchanged a look, one which didn't go unnoticed by the others in the room. They were all completely focused on the set of kids before them—kids who were their _family_, their family in another timeline. This was beyond surreal, and for one in particular even more than the others.

Gohan, Vegeta, and Musume exchanged nods of understanding, and Gohan looked back to Bulma. "Well—what year are we in, then?"

"893," Bulma supplied with a smile—one which quickly vanished from her face as Musume suddenly yelped, at the same time her brothers' eyes widened in something akin to horror.

"Oh no," the raven-haired girl fretted, shaking her head. "Oh no oh no-Papa and Mama are going to _kill _us!"

_Papa_.

That little, two-syllable word resonated in Trunks' head and he suddenly felt very dizzy. Daddy was _him_. Kami save him, if he could have fallen over and died right there, he would have. But no, that fate was apparently too kind for him, for just then something else that Musume had said stopped his train of thought and he couldn't stop himself from opening his suddenly very dry mouth to ask.

"Mama?"

Gohan was the one to look at him—Musume seemed to still be too annoyed over what he had said to her—and give him a look similar to the condescending one which he'd delivered Bulma earlier. "Yeah, like our _mom_?"

Trunks shook his head. "I mean—who? Who—is she? What's her name?"

"Mama?" Vegeta arched an eyebrow at him. "Mama's name is Pan."

Okay, so that was all he needed. Kami was done fucking with him, Trunks was sure, because now—_now_—there was no way he could be still standing. Not after that. Not after—shit, _Pan_? Of all the names that could have come out of that little boy's mouth, that was the last one he had been expecting. Pan was—that was impossible! Pan was one of his best friends, and it was _wrong_, he still thought of her like a kid sister anyway, like—it was like having children with _Bra_, lord save him, and—well, his father and Gohan were both dead, he supposed that wasn't a factor for his future self, but—

_Pan_?

Trunks' head was pounding, his heart pumping ten times too fast, but on the outside he was completely numb. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that his dad was holding him by his collar up against the bedroom wall and screaming something in his face, but that information was secondary to all of the other panic-driven thoughts racing through his head at the moment.

_Pan_?

Trunks was lucky that someone was paying attention to what was going on. Before Vegeta could slam his son's back into the wall again, Bulma intervened, horrified. "Vegeta!" she exclaimed. "Cut it out, this isn't the same Trunks we're talking about!"

"It doesn't make a damn bit of difference!" Vegeta responded loudly. The name Pan had apparently struck a chord within the Saiya-jin prince as well—a very sensitive one. With a look of disgust at Trunks, he let go of his shirt and allowed the dazed man to sink to the floor. "He's still my son and she's still Kakkarot's third class grand-spawn and I won't have it!"

Bra shook her head and stepped forward, putting a hand on her father's arm. A smile had begun to grow wider and wider on her face, ever since that little boy had uttered the name 'Pan.'

"No, Daddy, think about it!" she said, unable to mask the excitement in her voice. "If Trunks or I had kids with a human, they'd only be quarter-bloods, but these kids are just under half!" As his sister spoke, Trunks glared intently at the ground, unable to hide the light pink color tinting his cheeks. Even if this was a good point, possibly a point that could save his life where his father was concerned, he didn't want to _hear _it. He didn't want to hear any more about having _kids_.

A tense silence blanketed the room as Vegeta seemed to be contemplating his daughter's words, and Bulma arched an eyebrow in his direction. Somehow she thought that if it had been any of the rest of them saying this, he wouldn't have been half as apt to listen. But as Bra gave her father's arm an extra squeeze and innocent smile, Vegeta scoffed quietly under his breath and the whole room let out a sigh of relief.

"Whatever," he replied, and a second later the Saiya-jin prince was out the bedroom door.

Bra's triumphant smile told the tale, causing the uncertain faces of the kids to relax. "You so owe me," she said, pointing a finger at Trunks.

Trunks just groaned loudly and put his face in his hands. Bulma frowned worriedly in her son's direction, but a small voice distracted her.

"Is Papa okay?" Gohan asked, eliciting an even louder groan from the lavender-haired Saiya-jin. The kids flinched in unison and Bulma forced a smile as she turned her attention towards them, knowing a distraction was needed. Having them and Trunks in the same room was bound to end in disaster sooner or later.

"He'll be fine, don't worry about him!" she chirped, moving her body to block him from the children's view. "Now, let's figure out what to do about you three. It'll take me a while to fix the time machine, so while I'm working on that, let's make you comfortable here."

"What!?"

Trunks shot back into view as he stood up suddenly, regarding his mother's back with a mix of horror and incredulity. "You've got to be kidding me, they can't stay here!"

Bra narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, answering before Bulma could. "Then where do _you _propose they stay, genius?" she asked. "They're toddlers, for Kami's sake, and they're _family_. You should be the last one of us ready to put them out of the house."

Bulma bit her lip in order to halt a joking question regarding what kind of a father Trunks thought he was, and with good reason. She had a feeling that her son could take little more of this before he was driven insane. Instead, she adopted a placating tone and regarded him seriously. "Trunks, it's just until I fix the machine," she told him. "I'm sure they'll stay out of your way. We do own the largest home in the city, after all."

"I can take care of them!" Bra chimed in. "We can go shopping tomorrow, the four of us. I've got to drop by the rest of the stores I missed out on today anyway, and they can help me plan Pan's birthday party! I guess since they're her kids they probably know a lot about her."

Musume, who had been relatively silent since the incident with Trunks, suddenly perked up. "I wanna go, I wanna go!" she chirped enthusiastically. Gohan and Vegeta, sitting behind their sister, looked a great deal less enthusiastic about the idea, but said nothing. If it was a choice between shopping and having to stay there with this angry and harsh version of their father, going to the mall with a couple girls didn't sound so bad after all.

"Oh, darn it all!" Bulma suddenly cursed, drawing Bra and Musume's starry-eyed attention away from one another. "What are we going to do about _Pan_?"

Bra threw her hands up in front of her chest instantly. "Not it!"

Trunks narrowed his eyes at his sister. "What are you talking about?"

"_Not it_," she repeated. "I mean that if someone's going to tell her, there's no way you're getting me to do it."

"What, you think _I'm_ doing it?" Trunks replied incredulously, realizing what Bra was getting at. Pan had to be told about this, before she found out in a worse way than he had—but to actually _tell _her... No, that wasn't something he was ready to think about, no matter who was doing the telling. Something like this could ruin their friendship, this would make things forever awkward between the two of them, even if neither of them would ever think of one another _that way._ It was a disaster waiting to happen. "Oh no, if you think I'm going to be the one to tell her about this, you've got another thing coming, Bra."

Bra's arms crossed stubbornly over her chest in that manner she'd inherited from their father and she arched an eyebrow at her older brother. "And what excuse do you have for that? They're _your _kids."

"For the last time, they're _not _my—" Trunks began, but with one glance at the three sitting on the bed, he stopped himself. He may not have wanted to claim them, but it would be a lie to say that Musume's hurt look from earlier hadn't gotten to him. He wasn't heartless. "—Whatever, it's just—well, why _shouldn't_ you tell her? You're her best friend!"

"It's not my place!" Bra argued. "This is between the two of you, and I think she'd be hurt if you didn't care enough to tell her yourself!"

Trunks threw his hands up in the air. "It's not a question of not caring, Bra! This isn't exactly the easiest thing to bring up with someone who's—" He cut off suddenly and with a scoff, seemingly too worked up now to continue his train of thought. "—whatever, you know what—I'm out of here, I'm not going to deal with this—"

In just as much of a huff as Vegeta had left in earlier, Trunks now exited the room. Bulma, Bra, Gohan, Vegeta, and Musume all watched him leave and sat in silence as his footsteps could be heard storming down the hall. A door slammed against its hinges, causing the building to shake slightly, and Bulma winced.

Well, that had gone well.

The blue-haired scientist looked over at the three children, still sitting and watching the door through which Trunks had just disappeared. The disappointment on their faces couldn't be hidden, and Bulma felt her heart go out to them. It wasn't Trunks's fault that he was acting like he was—this was a lot to handle at once-but that certainly wasn't anything that these kids should have seen. Imagining her son of the future as opposed to her son now, the two pictures were a rather stark contrast. Mirai Trunks was probably a very doting and loving father—which meant that Trunks had it in him to be one too, but what he said was right. These were not his children, not in the traditional sense, and at this point he was neither prepared nor knew how to be that father that they had expected to be greeted by.

That didn't mean, however, that she couldn't be the grandma they'd never had. Her son may not have been ready to be a father, but Bulma had been ready for _years _to be the doting grandmother to his children, whenever he decided to finally settle down and have them.

Reaching out in a maternal manner, she touched Musume's shoulder. The little girl and her brothers turned around to see her, and Bra, seeing what she was doing, went to her mother's side with an equally comforting smile on her face.

"Come on, you three must be tired," she told them. "Let's find you something to sleep in and get you settled in for the night."

The siblings exchanged looks, then nodded. Well, at least _someone _here seemed to be on their side.

_**Capsule Corporation**_

_**( future timeline )**_

"I don't understand it; that old machine was in complete disrepair from what I could tell."

"It was supposed to have been," Trunks picked up, throwing a tired arm over his wife's shoulders.

The past twenty-four hours had taken a lot of energy out of both of the parents. It had been a battle for Pan to convince her spouse to help her to continue to look for their missing children and not completely give up hope after they had scoured Capsule Corp. top to bottom. Trunks had been difficult and extremely emotional the rest of the day following the android attack, and Pan wasn't sure how she'd been able to keep up her optimism and patience through it all apart from knowing that he _needed _her to. After all, Pan had been battling to keep her own emotions under control as well—and more than once she had almost lost her temper with him. Every time, she had to tell herself that she understood his pain and that getting frustrated would only make things worse.

It was so unbelievably hard, though. After losing Kae like they had, to think that they might have lost the rest of their children too…

Finally, after flying around the city until nightfall, they had resigned themselves that there was no more that they could do until morning. They had searched everywhere in the compound, everywhere around the city and in the surrounding woods, and still there was no sign of the youths. Not even a single weak ki signature to work off of.

Trunks's stormy mood had worsened enormously and Pan's flimsy optimism was being sullied by the second with discouragement. Knowing that they couldn't search forever, they had made their way wearily back to the lab… to find nothing there.

Pan hadn't yet decided if that was a good kind of nothing or a bad kind of nothing; all she knew was that the old time machine was gone. Completely and utterly _vanished._

She was caught in a confusing limbo between relief and panic. On one hand, they knew that Gohan, Vegeta, and Musume were alive and to some extent what had happened to them. But in truth, they had no _idea _what had happened to them. The kids didn't know how to operate the machine, so they could be in absolutely any timeline. That was a _lot_ of timelines. Just the thought of it was dizzying, and Pan found herself burying her head into Trunks's muscular chest with a groan at the reminder.

He tightened his arm around her shoulders in a reassuring squeeze. "I suppose the engines were still intact, even after so long," Trunks continued to muse. Neither of them wanted to imagine what a fight it was going to be to find their children again, but they had to start looking if they ever hoped to have a shot in hell at it. "That's probably the only thing, though."

Suddenly, Trunks felt his wife's muscles tense underneath his touch. He glanced curiously down at Pan, who had raised her head, looking as if a light bulb had just gone off somewhere.

"No," she said, slowly at first, and then, "No, it wasn't!" she exclaimed, quickly abandoning her place at his side. "That's _right_! The radio is still working!"

It took a moment for Pan's words to register in his head, but when they did, a disbelieving smile overtook Trunks' face. "Wait, are you serious? No, I—yes, I remember-I mean-Do you know what this means?"

He grabbed the raven-haired woman by the shoulders, his euphoria at this discovery taking hold of him. If Pan weren't a quarter-Saiya-jin, she might not have been able to stand the unbridled strength of his grip, care abandoned in the midst of his excitement. Ignoring his rhetorical question, however, Pan flashed him a tiny smile and pressed a finger to his lips before slipping out of his grasp.

"Not so fast," she told him as she made her way back to the wrap-around desk. "We've still got to take into account a number of things that could go wrong." Her fingers danced across the inlaid keyboard at a blinding speed as she spoke, her brow furrowed in concentration. "First of all, that thing is ancient. I've got no doubt that your mother's machines still have the ability to connect with it, but _it _might not be able to receive the transmission."

"I don't think that will be much of a problem," Trunks hurried to answer. "Even if video doesn't work, audio should work fine." Her went to his wife's side and braced his hand on the desk to lean over her, despite knowing how much she hated it when people hovered over her work. This was a special situation, though—he couldn't just stand back while she was potentially getting in touch with their lost children.

"That brings me to my second point," Pan replied distractedly. She gritted her teeth slightly, fighting the urge to push him away from her. He was just worried about them, she told herself, and tried to focus on what she was doing. "Depending upon how far back they've gone, it could be extremely difficult to reach them."

The Saiya-jin made a few final presses on the keyboard and then stopped, seeming to process something through her head. "If I'm calculating this right," Pan said after a moment, "with time and quality deterioration of the device, they have to have traveled back less time them you did." She was almost speaking to herself more than Trunks. "The furthest they could have traveled without losing radio contact is… about five years back into the old timeline."

Trunks nodded, and now he was doing the math in his head as well. "That's about right," he said, thoughtfully. "That would be around thirty-three years after I left. That means they can't have gone far—we should still be able to get a hold of them, shouldn't we?"

"That's just what I was testing," Pan replied with an affectionate grin. "If you had been paying attention, you would have noticed that I already set the frequencies." Now she didn't hold back in pushing him out of her way. He could still hear just as well a couple of feet to the side. "What's the point of letting you hover if you don't even pay attention to what I'm doing?"

He smirked and apologized sheepishly. Pan laughed and turned back around in her chair and began to fiddle with several of the buttons and switches on the desk. Trunks couldn't tell from his wife's cool demeanor if she was feeling the same things, but his own anticipation grew with each click. If this didn't work, they were back to square one. If this didn't work, he didn't know what they were going to do.

A flash of white noise emanated from a speaker next to the keyboard, and both Saiya-jin visibly took a deep breath.

"Well, here goes nothing."

_**Capsule Corporation **_

_**( present timeline )**_

It was early in the morning when the chime of a doorbell rang off the walls inside the Briefs residence. Bulma, who had been working in the kitchen on the army-sized breakfast that was due a household of three Saiya-jin, wiped her hands on a dishcloth as she made her way though the living room, a confused expression on her face. Who in the world came to call at seven in the morning?

When she unlatched and swung open the door, she was greeted by the last face she had expected to see.

"Oh, Pan!" she chirped, attempting to not sound awkward but failing miserably. Bulma smiled nervously and quickly began searching her mind for possible excuses she could make that would deter the Son girl from whatever she was there for. However, before she could open her mouth to speak again, Pan let herself into the house with an offhanded greeting. That was what happened, she supposed, when you were as close as family, but—

-oh, ironic word choice now, wasn't that?

Shaking her head, Bulma quickly closed the door and chased after the quarter Saiya-jin at a brisk walk as she made her way towards the dining room. "Pan!" she called after her, causing the girl to stop and turn to look. "I didn't expect you here today, did Bra call you?"

"Oh, no, Trunks did," she answered, and Bulma felt her heart soar at the words. Did that mean that Trunks was actually taking this better than he had put on? Was he going to tell her already and get it over with?

"That's good!" the scientist exclaimed, clapping her hands together.

Pan shot Bulma a reproachful look, but seemed to shake it off quickly. "Yeah, we've been planning to spar since last week." Pan had been smiling as she spoke, but it turned to a confused frown quickly. "Uh, are you okay? Bulma?"

She was referring to Bulma's expression, which had just dropped into something akin to dread. The scientist stared blankly at the young woman in front of her, even as Pan waved a hand in front of the older woman's face. After a few moments, she shrugged and continued her journey into the dining room. "Alright, well, tell me when he's—Oh, Trunks, hey!"

Bulma seemed to snap out of her thoughts—all along the lines of 'terrible, terrible' and 'impending disaster'-and rushed after the Saiya-jin's quickly retreating form. She was too late. Hearing Pan's greeting to Trunks, Bulma smacked a hand to her forehead and cringed, and suddenly her walk into the dining room seemed _much _less frantic.

When she finally made it inside, she met the sight of Vegeta sitting impatiently at the table, Bra watching Pan with a sympathetic look, and Pan watching the stairs in utter confusion. It was no wild guess to assume where her cowardly son had gone.

Bulma sighed, and opened her mouth to make up some excuse, but Vegeta spoke up first.

"What are you standing there staring at the girl for, woman? Hurry up with the food already!" he demanded. "You humans are excruciatingly slow when you wish to be!"

The scientist shot a glare at her husband, but truthfully was happy for any excuse to dismiss Trunks' behavior. "Coming right up, _Your Highness,_" she answered as she returned to the kitchen, sarcasm dripping from her speech.

The raven-haired Saiya-jin spun around towards Bra with a glare etched on her features. "What the hell did I do?" she asked.

Bra did her best to shrug noncommittally. "Who knows? He's probably just being moody."

Pan took one last look at the stairs and sighed before sliding into the seat Trunks had vacated. "Well, looks like I won't be getting any exercise today, then," she said. "But if he's going to be like that, then I'm not leaving before I eat his breakfast."

_**Capsule Corporation – Bulma's Lab**_

_**( present timeline )**_

Musume bit her lip nervously, staying as far away as she could from the two monkeys she called her brothers. They shouldn't have been in there, and all three of them knew it. Their new grandma had said they shouldn't mess around in her lab, and Musume just knew she was going to catch them. As she observed Vegeta and Gohan's fiddling with the robots and gadgets that filled the room, the eldest Briefs child was thinking up excuses she could give Grandma Bulma when that inevitable time came.

The lab, however, had an undeniable allure to it. Their mother hadn't allowed them to fool around in the one in the future either, and there just seemed to be so much cool stuff laying around. A lot of it, they had noticed, was similar if not identical to what was here—previous models, probably, but it didn't take the latest technological advancement to entertain three kids who had spent all of their short lives in the countryside.

"This is great, look at this!" Gohan exclaimed. With his small hand, he held up a round, silver device with a plate of green glass on the front. Recognizing it immediately, Vegeta dropped the capsules he had been sorting through and rushed over to see it. Even Musume's worries were, for the moment, suppressed by her curiosity.

"That's that dragonball thing Mama and Papa keep at the house, isn't it?" Musume observed, moving closer.

Vegeta grabbed it from his brother and tapped the glass with his index finger. "It's gotta be _really _old if it's here in this time!" With his free hand, the toddler began to count on his fingers, but quickly lost track and gave up the effort. "Um.. how far did we come back again?"

"I dunno," Gohan replied with a shrug, taking the radar back and placing it back on the desk. "I just know that we're not supposed to be here."

All three of them fell silent for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts. What if they had messed something up by coming back here? What if their parents couldn't find out where they were and they never got back? Were they ever going to see them again, or were they stuck in this timeline forever? What did they do if they were? What if their daddy in this timeline decided he didn't want anything to do with them and-

Suddenly, Musume's head shot up and towards the worn time machine across the lab. This sudden movement shook Vegeta and Gohan out of their thoughts, and Gohan frowned at his sister.

"You alright, Musu?"

"Ssh!" she hushed them, putting a finger to her lips. "I think there's someone in here with us!"

In an instant, the two boys were on their guard, reaching out with their senses to find the ki of an intruder, just like their father had taught them. However, it wasn't an energy signature that they detected—rather, a sound. After a moment, Vegeta's brow furrowed in confusion.

"I don't think it's a someone," he said slowly, muscles relaxing slightly. Curiosity piqued, the three walked in separate directions to search for the source of the sound. It was sibilant and soft, like the white noise on a television. With the aid of sensitive Saiya-jin ears, they could also pick up something else mixed in with it—a distinctly female voice, struggling to break through the storm of static.

"Guys, it's coming from the time machine, I think!" Gohan exclaimed after a second, and the three gathered quickly over by the dingy contraption. Cautiously, they began to pile themselves into the one tiny seat; despite being small, it was a fight to fit into such a tight space. When they weren't running for their lives from an android, the room seemed a great deal more limited.

"Move over, Sis! Your foot is jabbing my leg!"

"It's not _my_ fault that you decided that you had to climb in with us!"

"This should be a no-girls-allowed zone. You're too whiny!"

"Me, whiny? I'm not the one crying about my leg, am I, Vege—"

"Shush already!" Gohan scolded, waving a hand to quiet the two. "I'm starting to hear the voice better!"

Sure enough, the voice from before was beginning to come through, bits and pieces of words emanating from the holed box in front of them. For a second, too, the voice almost sounded a bit like…

"Mama!" Musume shouted out, and all of them, wide-eyed, gaped at the box from which Pan was speaking. In just a few seconds more, they could hear her perfectly, save for the occasional interference, and grins broke out onto all of their faces.

"Oh, Kami—I'm so glad to hear your voice, Musume!" Pan exclaimed, taking little effort to hide the pure relief she was feeling.

Suddenly, Vegeta lurched himself forward and grabbed at the box with his two small hands, eyes stinging at the sides. "Mama! Where are you? The box monster ate you! Gohan," he turned to his brother and tearfully wailed, "I think…I think maybe, I think the time machine ate Mama! Do something!"

He grabbed Gohan by the shoulders, who only rolled his eyes and pried his twin off of him. "And maybe you're an idiot," he said. "Calm down already, Vegeta. It's just a radio transmission, stupid. She's talking to us from our time."

With a sigh of relief, Vegeta took a deep breath to calm himself. However, it was only a split second before all three of the children were shaken as another voice resonated throughout the lab. They spun around in their seat—as well as they could, given the lack of space—, hearts racing at the sight of the person standing in the doorway.

"What are you kids doing in here?"

It was Bulma, looking like she was caught between whether to be angry or confused. Oh, the woes of being a grandparent. "I thought that I told you three—"

"Gramma, quick, come here!" Gohan cut her off, being the first to recover. He jumped from the machine and grabbed a surprised Bulma by the hand, dragging her behind him towards his siblings. "Gramma, it's Mama and Daddy; they're talking to us through the time machine!"

Bulma blinked, allowing herself to be pulled along towards the machine, even lifted up into the air and onto its edge by the tiny boy. "What are you going on ab-" she began to ask before being cut short once again, this time by a rustling sound from a speaker on the control panel. A few short seconds later, she heard a voice that she thought she had heard the last of nearly thirty four years ago.

"Hey, Mom."

* * *

**A/N: **Wow, it's been a long time, hasn't it, guys? :) Well, I'm still here! I didn't mean to take nearly a year to update this and I'm so sorry it did take this long. I was working on rewriting this chapter last summer, actually, and I got halfway through and then lost the file. :( So I got pretty discouraged and stopped writing, but recently I've found the willpower to come back to this. I do want to finish this story, because finishing a multi-chapter fanfic like this is a goal of mine, so I hope you will all keep supporting me! Part of the reason I came back to this chapter is because I've gotten so many reviews since stopping, so keep it up! Reviews really do make me want to write more!

**REVIEWER RESPONSES:**

_Panpita; _Thank you so much! Well, I didn't update 'soon', but I did update. That's something, isn't it? Haha.

_KAI/THE/RAG/DOLL; _As you'll see in later chapters (and a little in this one), I'm trying to keep away from portraying Trunks as a player. I do believe that with his position and wealth he's had his fair share of women, but I don't see him as a playboy who runs around with different girls every night. Thank you for continuing to review!

_Lady Blue Knight; _Omg what a nice review! Thank you so much! Your review did compel me a lot, please keep reviewing! :)

_Graelyn-chan; _Haha! I find myself having to wipe my mind of the old RPG when I'm writing this, as well. Things changed between the RPG, the first version of this, and this version x_x I hope it makes it all work better, though! Thanks for the review :)

_Pan-chan34; _Thanks so much, keep reading and reviewing!

_Apri-chan; _Haha what a coincidence! April babies for the win! :D I'm glad you like the story, hopefully I won't disappoint you in the coming chapters!

_AnimeFreak-TrunksPan-Lover4evr; _Phew, what a long name! ;) In a way you are correct. Kaeida was the infant in the first version, and she had a twin sister who was the baby that died at the hands of the androids. Kaeida was completely unnecessary as a character, so I decided to nix her twin entirely and make Kaeida the dead baby. That way, there's still the motivation to have Trunks and Pan going back in time, and I don't have an extra character that serves no purpose to the story. Streamlining, ahoy! :D

_McChubbin; _OMG that's so cool! I can't believe someone remembered something I wrote ^/^ I'm so glad you found this one, because this is about 98237492384729348 times better than the old version you read so long ago.

_Piccolo is green; _Look, I'm updating! :D Thanks for the review, it's reviews like yours that are written a long time after the last update that remind me that this story is still here and people want to see it finished (as do I, but I've got a busy life and sometimes forget :( ) Keep reviewing!

_Akerenit; _I really appreciate that you are reading my story even though English is not your first language. It must be so hard! o_o Thank you for the review, keep reading! :)


	5. 04: Suspicions Arising

**A Place in Time**

**Chapter Four: Suspicions Arising**

**Caelestis Kibeth**

_"Gramma, quick, come here!" Gohan cut her off, being the first to recover. He jumped from the machine and grabbed a surprised Bulma by the hand, dragging her behind him towards his siblings. "Gramma, it's Mama and Daddy; they're talking to us through the time machine!"_

_Bulma blinked, allowing herself to be pulled along towards the machine, even lifted up into the air and onto its edge by the tiny boy. "What are you going on ab-" she began to ask before being cut short once again, this time by a rustling sound from a speaker on the control panel. A few short seconds later, she heard a voice that she thought she had heard the last of nearly thirty four years ago._

_"Hey, Mom."_

_**Capsule Corportation**_

_**( Present Timeline )**_

A groan of boredom escaped Pan's lips for the tenth time in as many minutes. It was a nice afternoon, and certainly not one that should be spent inside drawing up useless things like guest lists and shopping lists and twenty other things for which Pan didn't even know there _could _be lists. She should be outside, flying, or sparring, or interrogating Trunks Briefs until he spilled whatever his fucking _problem _was with her, or…

Sinking back into the downy softness of Bra's electric pink bedspread, Pan half listened to the other girl chatter something about what constituted a chic and classy party favor, and half stared scornfully out a window into the cloudless blue sky. What she wouldn't do to be out there right now, the wind in her hair, the sunshine on her face… She certainly wasn't about to get away from these maddening thoughts of Trunks by being held captive in _his_ house, with _his_ sister.

Okay, so maybe it was more like one quarter listening and three quarters staring off into space. Either way, all she knew right now was that the constant sound of party magazine pages flipping was like a lullaby, and she wouldn't mind just shutting her eyes and having a nice afternoon nap right about now. That would certainly be one way to get these thoughts of a certain Capsule Corp. CEO off her mind for a while…

"_Pan!" _

"Huh—what?" Onyx eyes blinked in startled confusion and Pan swung her head around to greet Bra's exasperated face. "Oh… sorry, I'm here. What was the question?"

Bra stared at her best friend for a moment before her brow knitted into an expression of concern. Setting some spread on what looked to be an elaborate set of centerpieces back down on the pile of reading material, she crossed her arms over her chest.

Pan, now fully snapped back to reality, observed all of this and instantly felt a twinge of terror rush up her spine. After 20 years, that look was one she knew dreadfully well. It was the look that said that Bra knew that she was hiding something, and that she wasn't about to let it drop until she got it out of her. For being so oblivious in other aspects of her life, Bra Briefs was certainly one of the most intuitive people Pan had ever met when it came to sensing what was brewing just beneath the surface.

Unfortunately, she was one of the most stubborn people Pan knew as well.

"What?" The question came layered in half-hearted innocence. It was futile, but Pan had to try anyway. She was not in the mood today to have this conversation, especially given that she wasn't even entirely sure what was wrong herself. "I'm just tired."

Bra didn't say a word, just raised one immaculately-shaped blue eyebrow in what could only be described as pure and utter disbelief. _Kami, _she was annoying when she did that.

Much to her dismay, Pan gave in after only a few measly seconds. "I don't know, okay!" Her hands went up in the air. "Just—the way he ignored me this morning, you know? I mean I know we piss each other off all the time, but I always know what I did. Hell, usually it was something I did on purpose and I _love _seeing him get all huffy at me, but—but I have no _idea _what this morning was about!"

The frustration painting her face pink, Pan sat straight up on the bed to face Bra. She opened her mouth to continue ranting, but found she had no idea what to say or how to form any further coherent thoughts on the subject. He was just—he was so stupid! And _she_ was so stupid for getting so riled up over it, but she hated when she didn't know what was going on. When someone was apparently mad for no reason. They'd been fine yesterday, hadn't they? Then suddenly the next morning he couldn't stand to look at her? It didn't make _sense, _it wasn't how you treated people! He just—

Feeling defeated, Pan finally relieved her mouth of its soundless flapping and sunk back against the wall with a pout. "I'm overreacting, aren't I?"

Despite the rhetorical nature of the question, Bra nodded at her with a know-it-all grin, eliciting a half-hearted glare from her friend. "I just—I just wish I knew what was up."

"Mm." Bra, who had thus far been silent as Pan indulged in her personal moment of fury, crossed her arms in thought. In truth, her complete lack of words had had less to do with consideration for her friend, and more to do with trying to come up with a good lie to cover Trunks' ass. As excruciatingly painful as it was for Bra Briefs to keep a secret, she still fully believed that he should be the one to tell their friend the news about their surprise visitors from the future.

All she knew is that her brother had better man up and get over his personal angsty temper tantrum soon, or else he was going to be in ten times the trouble when the veil over Pan's eyes was pulled up by the wrong person.

"It's probably not you," Bra finally said, rolling her words around in her mouth gingerly, trying to choose the perfect ones to use. "I mean, you know Trunks. He's prone to worse hissy fits than a pre-pubescent girl some mornings. He was probably just hung over again."

Pan considered the option with an inward sigh. It was probably true, now that she thought about it. It was no secret that Trunks was a heavy partier and no stretch to believe that he could have just had a rough night. Certainly, the lingering effects of alcohol would at least explain why he would be so angry over seemingly nothing—come to think of it, he hadn't seemed particularly pleased with _anyone _in the room that morning, not just her. Had he just been momentarily angry at the world while nursing a splitting headache?

Right. That had to be it. It made sense, after all, and Pan would have preferred to _believe _that was the case—if not, the only other option was much too frustrating to think about.

"Yeah, maybe," she answered. As much as she tried, Pan couldn't force herself to sound entirely convinced. It would certainly keep her saner to work at believing Bra's hypothesis, though, so that's what she intended to do.

For now.

"He's been stressed over work lately, right?"

Bra nodded thoughtfully. It seemed like Pan was willing to believe her conclusions about her brother's attitude, but it couldn't hurt to build them up just a little more. "That's true. The company hasn't been doing very well since Mom handed it over to him. She's been breathing down his neck about it nonstop for the past few months—that'd probably be enough to drive me to drink too."

A quiet hum of sympathy befell the room as both girls considered the difficulties of the older Briefs child's life. It never seemed that way from the outside, of course. Dashingly handsome, wealthy, and in his early 30's, press praised him constantly as the most eligible bachelor in the world.

To outside eyes, he lived a life that could only be described as fun and fancy free. Paparazzi always caught shots of him out partying at the most exclusive venues, ringing up tabs, women swarming him like bees… Magazines told tales of his privileged upbringing, his success as a fighter, and his role as a businessman that had all but fallen into his lap. "The Luckiest Man on Earth," Pan had seen him called more than once. She couldn't help but to scoff quietly at the idea.

Those people didn't know the first thing about him.

She knew Trunks, she thought with a small rush of inexplicable and yet undeniable pride.

_She _understood Trunks.

"You're right," Pan returned finally, allowing a smile to creep over her features. "I was overreacting. He was just hung over. I don't know why I made it into more than it is."

It had to be true. She'd heard the complaints from him time and time again about how he had never wanted to take over Capsule Corp., about how little passion he had for his work, about how he could never seem to do well enough to get his ambitious mother off his back. He'd heard the lecture a million times that the lifestyle he was living was the last way to go about dealing with the stress of it all, but to Pan it was at least understandable _why _he acted so carelessly. So work had been hard, and he had gone off and tried to escape from it once again and woken up on the wrong side of the bed in the morning.

It didn't mean she wasn't still pissed off at how he'd treated her. She just wouldn't kick his ass _as _far into the ground as she'd been planning when she saw him again.

Breaking the silence of the room, Bra abruptly jumped out of her seat and clapped her hands together, causing Pan for the second time in the same conversation to snap out of her daydreams. "Well, now that that's settled, what do you say to some lunch!"

Instantly, a wide grin broke out onto the other girl's face and she leapt off the bed, landing past Bra and inside the doorway. As good as talking was, food was the only _sure _way to get a Saiya-jin's mind off of something. Bra's grin mimicked Pan's, and an impatient "What are you waiting for?" summoned her to begin down to the kitchen, concerns for her big brother for now left far behind.

* * *

"_Hi, Mom…"_

For what felt like an eternity, stunned silence was the only thing Bulma Briefs could come up with. The middle-aged woman stared blankly at the radio, that voice—one she heard every day and yet not in_ so _many years—sending shivers down her spine.

It was different now, of course. Changed. Adapted, perhaps. The low tenor she knew so well was tainted heavily with a maturity beyond even what she had known him to possess already. He sounded tired, too. And sad. Oh, how it broke her heart to hear that sadness brewing just below the surface. What had happened to her son since she had last seen him 34 long years ago?

"How are you, Trunks?" She cursed the quiet tremor of oncoming tears in her tone. All it took was one deep chuckle from the other end of the radio to move her to wipe at her eyes.

"Don't cry, Mom." The knowing way he said it made it seem like he could see her face as well as if he were sitting right next to her. "I'm fine. _We're _fine."

Bulma opened her mouth to call him out on his lie, but as if sensing the oncoming lecture, he spoke again in time to cut her off. "How have you been? I hear you've been put on babysitting duty for a while."

"Yes, I suppose I have." A reluctant grin kissed the scientist's features. "At least your kids know how to choose a good one."

Pausing, Bulma reached her arms over to encircle the children on either side of her affectionately. Vegeta and Gohan twitched uncomfortably, confused by the gesture of familiarity far beyond a period of 24 hours. Musume, on the other hand, happily threw small arms around Bulma's waist and buried her face into her side with a contented smile. "They're angels, Trunks. I just can't believe I'm a grandma!"

A bemused scoff came from the other end of the radio. "You say that now. You haven't had a chance to live with them yet," Trunks warned, eliciting a scandalized gasp from each of the three children. Their father seemed to ignore it, although the undeniable smile in his voice made it clear that he had heard them.

"Anyway, I'm glad to hear you're doing okay with them," he continued on. "Don't worry, we'll be there as soon as we can. Pan's been clocking sleepless nights getting the new machine fully functional—you left a lot of detailed blueprints behind that have given us enough clues to figure it all out."

Bulma felt a rush of pride at that—of _course _she had. It was her they were talking about. "Well, I'm happy to try to help you any time. Just radio me and I'll see what I can do."

"Yeah."

Trunks paused a moment, and the high frequencies carried whispers of a soft female voice in the background. There was a rustle, and a lower voice joined in, too far away from the transmitter to deliver audible messages, before Trunks returned at full volume.

"Mom, I was also wondering something else…"

"What's that, Trunks?"

He hesitated. "I… I don't know how much the kids have told you, but we're in a bit of a… dilemma right now," he spoke carefully. "You see, the reason we've taken out the time machines is that—"

"You need to come back."

Intuitive as always, his mother was. There was no use dancing around the heart of the problem when it came to her.

"Our timeline is falling apart. There's been—mass destruction, genocide of the human race… We're lucky _we're _still alive, and our kids too." Trunks went silent, and for a reason she couldn't explain, Bulma was stabbed straight in the heart with the sheer heaviness of the quiet. She waited for what he wanted to say. "Well, three of them are."

"Oh no," she gasped softly, without realizing she'd opened her mouth at all. Bulma's arm loosened around the boys and went to her chest, which felt suddenly tight, as if a fist of raw tragedy had clenched hard around her heart. "I—Trunks, I don't know what to say—"

"It's okay, you don't—it's in the past, we're moving on," he saved quickly, regretting bringing it up at all. Not everyone in the world needed to hear all of the torments of their lives. For most people, it was too much to take. "The point is, we've ridden it out as long as we can. We didn't want to do this, but it's the only thing now left. To stay here would be to sign a suicide note for us, and for our children."

Regardless of her son's changing the topic, Bulma still hadn't recovered from the shock of the news of his dead child—children? She really didn't know how many he and Pan had altogether—when she nodded numbly in response. For a few long moments stillness reigned, as if she had forgotten that their communication was dependent upon audible cues.

"I know we're risking serious disruption in the timelines, if that's what you're thinking," Trunks hurried to explain, taking his mother's silence as consideration of the magnitude of the situation. "I—we didn't plan to barge into the life of my adult self—we planned to go back to when I was a baby, you see, but then the _kids_, they—... I swear we'll make it work." Again, Bulma ached at her son's tone. He did no good hiding his desperation. "We'll explain things or—or we can just make a quiet exit to somewhere far away, or we can—"

"Whoa there." Without thinking about it, Bulma held out a hand to stop his ramble, as if the radio box were physically her son. "Don't worry about any of that. There's no question, you all _have _to come back here. We'll figure out the details later."

What came from the other side was only a hushed sigh of relief, but to a knowing mother, it sounded like a heavy weight being lifted off of her son's shoulders. "Thank you, Mom."

A simple reply, seeping with gratitude, caused the smile to finally peek back from behind Bulma's worried frown.

"It's not a problem."

"_M—m? Mom, you-cut-ing-t."_

Bulma knitted her brow and put her hands on either side of the radio, examining the knobs. Clearly they were losing signal, whether it be from lack of power or disturbance on either side, and suddenly Trunks' voice was only coming through in between bursts of white noise. Damn it all, if only she knew how to work this thing, maybe she could figure out a way to clear up the signal again.

"_See—few-d-ys. B-ood, kids."_

With a grunt of frustration, Bulma hit the side of the radio with the heel of her hand—violence towards machines was the Number One Secret Tool of genius inventors, didn't you know?—and for one split, fleeting second, the transmission broke through the noise.

"_I love you."_

And then there was nothing.

Bulma sighed, and leaned back into the seat with a quiet smile.

Well, it didn't matter, did it? Trunks was coming home.

* * *

" -And I'll see you tomorrow bright and early to shop for supplies!"

Bra waved from the top of the staircase, shooting her friend's back an enthusiastic grin. Heaving a small sigh, Pan weakly returned the gesture and made her way down the hall and towards the front room. It seemed like she wasn't going to get a choice in this matter—after all, whenever Bra wanted something, that meant that she was damn well going to get it. No whining or arguing on Pan's part was about to stop her.

Just the thought of the next day made her realize just how good it would feel to be able to finally get home and relax. It had been a long day, and as she made her way through the labyrinth of hallways in the Capsule Corp. mansion, she relished the mental feeling of her soft bed, settled in the coziness of the country home she shared with her parents. It was nice, for sure, to have the biggest home in the city like the Briefs family, but when it came down to it, nothing beat the homey feeling of a Son family household.

Even as her best friend, talking to Bra all day could beat anyone down and leave them begging for mercy, and Pan was no exception. It was as if the other girl had some bottomless well of energy stored underneath all that blue hair of hers. Maybe it was a gift.

Yeah, a gift. Or really annoying.

Allowing herself a soft chuckle at her own thought, Pan continued on down the long-memorized path towards the front door. As she did every visit, she pondered what the point was in any family having a house large enough to require a hallway this long. On days like this, all she wanted to do was get to the air already. The sooner she took off, the sooner she got home, and the closer that hot bath and downy mattress were to manifesting themselves in reality.

_"__WHAT! You cheated!"_

Pan blinked and her foot froze upon reaching the ground in front of her, halting her in her determined path. Her eyes shot towards the source of the voice, the family room just down the hallway and to her left. Her brow knit in suspicion. Who was that? It had sounded young, far too young to be any of the residents of the house… If she was hearing correctly, it sounded almost like a _toddler_ that had spoken.

_"__I did not, Musu! Don't be mad just 'cause you can't even fight right in a video game!"_

Now a second voice, male this time but just as juvenile, joined in. Was Bulma babysitting? No, that didn't seem like her. Who did she know who needed a babysitter anyway?

…But then why else would there be children running around the Briefs home?

"_Shut up, I can too fight right! Or do you need a reminder?"_

_"_OW!_ GEEZ!"_

The dialogue paired with the sound of skin-on-skin contact left little to the imagination as to what had just occurred. But what was weird about it was not the children fighting—rather, the resonance of the girl's maneuver. She knew that sound well, and that was no normal hit that had been made—it had been hard. _Too _hard.

No normal toddler was that strong.

Okay, this was really way too bizarre. Curiosity taking hold of her, Pan began to move again, this time with added care, towards the sound of the mystery children. As the neared the doorway, she tentatively peeked over into the living room, being sure to keep most of her body obscured behind cover of the wall.

However, what was waiting for her on the other side was almost enough to cause her to lose that sly cover she was trying to uphold. What was waiting for her on the side was something she _never _would have expected.

Not two, but three small children, all looking to be no more than a year or two apart, were present on the scene. They were seated in front of a large flat screen television and video game console, two holding the controllers as one sat off to the side in observation. But that wasn't the strange part about it... it was the pang of uncanny familiarity that took grip on her chest at the sight of them.

Finding herself inexplicably unable to tear her eyes away from the kids, Pan mentally scanned each of them in turn, the desire to memorize their every feature suddenly overwhelming.

The girl—Musu, she had been called—measured a good six inches taller than either of the boys, and sported a shoulder-length cut of raven ringlets. A couple delicate curls came down to frame her face, in which was set a pair of stunning cerulean eyes. That was odd, wasn't it? To have anything but brown eyes was all but exotic in this part of the world, much less such a pronounced blue. Pan only personally knew of the Briefs family having the gene, which indicated that this girl was likely somehow related. It was just _how _that she couldn't quite make sense of. As far as she knew, after her parents had died, that had been the last of Bulma's family…

There was no use trying to make sense of it now, though. Focusing back on Musu, Pan allowed her eyes to run across the child's form for any indicator as to where her strength had come from. At first glance, she seemed light and petite, but the harder Pan looked, the more she began to notice in the way of the little girl's uncanny musculature. She was small, for sure, but there was no denying that she was at least minimally fit and defined. She didn't look strong enough on the outside to have delivered such a resounding hit, but then… who else had she ever heard of being able to punch that hard, that young, outside of her own friends and family?

Moving on, Pan's gaze rested on the boy sitting directly next to Musu. From the way that he was rubbing his arm and leaning away from the triumphant little girl, she could only assume that this was the perpetrator of the earlier teasing. He sported a head of black hair as well, his coming up shorter and in an almost identical fashion to Trunks' signature style. Trying her best to ignore the question of how these children were related to Bulma's family this time around—they _had_ to be, right?—, Pan instead focused in on his face. Unlike the girl, his eyes were a more common coffee hue, but something in his facial structure held a strong resemblance. There was practically no question in her mind that these were siblings that she was watching now, which lead her curiosity over to the final, silent child.

Calmly, the unnamed one sat off to the side, looking as if he were debating between stopping the argument and just minding his own business. Not quite The Peacekeeper of the bunch, but certainly the most sedate and laid back. She imagined that if she had a chance to observe them longer, she would eventually witness him get up and leave with a roll of his eyes at the immaturity of the other two.

The problem was, Pan was suddenly too terrified to stay around and find out.

This final child—_he_ was terrifying. His hair, his eyes, his face, his… _everything_.

Pan's grip on the doorframe quivered as she was suddenly faced with the ghost of her long-deceased grandfather.

Of course—no, that was stupid, he wasn't a _ghost_, he was just a stupid kid, but—oh Kami, she had never seen such a carbon copy of her grandpa Goku in her life, apart from the photographs of her uncle as a child. All of a sudden, it was hard to breathe—there was something rising up in her throat, choking her back, and she blinked furiously at the stinging in her eyes that had come out of nowhere. It couldn't be… He couldn't be…

"_Guys, stop it. You're being dumb…"_

The admonishing sound of his tone was like an alarm clock going off in her head. "Oh Dende," Pan gasped to herself. Still wracked by soft tremors, her hands went up to cover her mouth as she backed up slowly, away from _that _room with _that boy._

Her feet kept moving unconsciously, until her back met with the hardness of the other side of the thin hallway. Jolting, as if awakening from a deep sleep, Pan snapped back into reality and her head darted side to side, desperate to find the nearest exit from this stupid, huge, _stupidly huge _ house.

Where was the entryway? To the right, or—no, the right was where she had just come from, so she should go _left_ to find the door and—fuck it, it didn't even matter. Her feet were already carrying her in a swift sprint towards the path that she had burned into memory.

Pan didn't stop until she had taken off into the air. The tension from her shaking nerves served as fuel for her to push her ki to the limit, mind blanking of anything except the overwhelming desire to get home. She wiped away the image of the mystery child, of the two other strange children that had been with him, all of the day's events. Even the inkling of doubt that remained concerning Trunks's treatment of her that morning vanished in an attempt to erase the image of that one disturbingly familiar little boy from her consciousness.

By the time she finally touched down on the lush grass surrounding her family's home, the whipping wind had managed to wipe Pan's face free of what remained of her miserable tears. Standing just outside the door for a long moment, she ran her hands over her face furiously. It would do no good to see her parents in this state—she had to pull it together.

It was nothing. It was nothing. It was_ nothing_.

But who _was_ he?

* * *

The abrupt swish of clothing and rush of air past the door was what first caused Vegeta's head to turn and brow to furrow.

The little boy stared at the empty doorway to the living room with a concerned expression, his attention drawn away from the war continuing to be waged over near the couch. "Guys," he ventured, waving behind his back to get his siblings' attention. "Guys, did you hear that?"

Halting mid-wrestle, Gohan and Musume looked up at their brother, their expressions of confusion mimicking the other's exactly. Gohan, from where he was busy being pinned to the carpet by his older sister, made the best shrugging motion possible from such a position. "I didn't hear nothin', why?"

Musume glared at Gohan and absentmindedly tightened her hold in response to his squirming. "You okay, Vegeta? I didn't hear anything either."

With a tiny growl, Vegeta finally looked back to them in an expression of disdain all but uncharacteristic of a boy so young. "_Yes_," he stated emphatically, "I'm fine. You guys were probably too busy acting dumb to notice it."

"Or you're—" Gohan stopped mid-sentence, trying to remember how the word he was thinking of went. It was a word Mama called Daddy all the time when he thought he felt androids around. Something that sounded like annoyed—Oh! "—Or you're _paranoid_," he finished, not without a hint of pride at his display of vocabulary.

Vegeta rolled his eyes at his twin's bit of pretentious behavior, then stuck out his tongue in response. So what if he was putting himself on the same level of maturity as Musume and Gohan? He was only four after all.

Figuring that he was done acting weird for the night, Gohan took the chance to push his sister off of him and the two went back to being immersed in their video game. Again choosing to sit out on the festivities, Vegeta's face turned into a thoughtful frown the moment his brother and sister's attention were occupied elsewhere. He leaned back into the leg of the couch and narrowed his eyes towards the empty doorway where the strange sound and feeling had come from.

"I still say there was someone there," he muttered under his breath.

However, it was what he wouldn't voice was really bothering him about their mystery eavesdropper…

_It felt like Mama._

* * *

**A/N: Well, there you have it! After a year I'm back to this again. I'm just too stubborn to give up until I've finished this story, even though my updates are a bit few and far between and only come along when I get inspiration. I'm going to work to try and update more frequently, though, even if it'll be hard, as I'm going into my last year of college next month. I have SUCH gratitude for those of you who have stuck with me since the first one went up so many years ago and all of you reviewers are what motivates me to keep coming back again and again. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I am doing my best to not let you down!**

**As always, please read and review. Your reviews are my best inspiration and motivation!**


	6. 05: Something Askew

**A Place in Time**

**Chapter Five; Something Askew**

**Caelestis**** Kibeth**

_Figuring that he was done acting weird for the night, Gohan took the chance to push his sister off of him and the two went back to being immersed in their video game. Again choosing to sit out on the festivities, Vegeta's face turned into a thoughtful frown the moment his brother and sister's attention were occupied elsewhere. He leaned back into the leg of the couch and narrowed his eyes towards the empty doorway where the strange sound and feeling had come from._

_"I still say there was someone there," he muttered under his breath._

_However, it was what he wouldn't voice was really bothering him about their mystery eavesdropper…_

_It felt like Mama._

_**Capsule Corporation**_

**_( Present_****_ Timeline)_**

_Bang-Bang-Bang_

_Bang-Bang-Bang_

_Bang-Bang-BANG-BANG_

A groggy groan passed Trunks Briefs's lips as his face lifted lazily, reluctantly from the softness of his pillow just enough to turn one sleep-dusted eye towards the door to his room. For some reason he couldn't entirely process just yet, it seemed to be shaking violently off its hinges, each bang sending a sharp but familiar knife through his already aching skull.

Hm... The potential options his bleary mind offered were three in number: they were having an earthquake, his father was upset about something again, or the apocalypse had just arrived.

Oh, right.

Or more likely, the source of the maddening battering noise was his _beloved _little sister. As probable as all other options appeared, there was no one else in the house obnoxious enough as to try and destroy his door at such an ungodly hour of the morning _but _Bra. Even his father had the decency to never harass him before six a.m.

Blatantly speaking, Trunks didn't know or care about what she wanted from him. It was a weekend, he was off work_, _and he was certainly not about to remove himself from the comfort of his well-deserved slumber just because the princess of the house demanded it. If he ignored her, certainly she'd have to go away eventually.

_Bang-Bang-Bang_

_Bang-Bang-Bang_

_Bang-Bang-BANG-BANG_

In theory, at least.

Oh for _fuck's sake_, Bra.

A tense hand ripped the heavy mahogany door away from its frame, revealing only what he expected to be there already: a prissy-looking, pajama-clad half-Saiya-jin. One who clearly had _no _idea the kind of fate that she had to look forward to if whatever this happened to be wasn't deathly urgent.

"What. Do. You. Want?" he enunciated in a venomous whisper. Now that they were basically out in the openness of the hallway, it occurred to Trunks that awakening his parents at this hour by ripping his sister a new one was probably not the wisest course of action. His pounding headache didn't particularly appreciate the idea either.

Actually, his head was probably doing more yelling at him right now than his mother could. Just how much had he had to drink the night before?

Considering the shiver of pain that had just run up his spine in response to trying to recall simple details, it was probably safe to assume that it had not been one of his finer moments. _Hell,_ he cursed miserably under his breath, flattening a palm to his forehead.

In front of him, Bra's mouth—previously in the shape of some sort of frustrated reprimand about proper treatment of younger sisters—slowly shut at observing her brother's evident pain. Given the amount of booze that had disappeared from the house between the previous night and that morning, she had expected nothing less than for Trunks to have one hell of a hangover. However, seeing a man so strong cringe so badly _did_ strike a chord of sympathy somewhere, deep down.

Deep,_ deep_ down.

That was okay. She could torment him just fine with or without raising her voice.

When he had finally brought his head up, Trunks saw Bra settle her hands on her hips and knew instantly that it was coming to him. Geez, if only he could remember what he had done _this _time. His half-confused, half-despairing look was the cue Bra took to begin.

"You are one lucky jerk to have me around, Trunks," she started off with a stern expression. "Do you remember any of it at all?"

Trunks's fist around the doorframe tightened visibly and he grated his teeth together. Between her stupid question and this hangover, he had about burned off his entire temper fuse for that morning. "Do I _look _like I have any idea what you're talking about?" he bit at her.

A little voice in his head told him that he should probably be thankful that someone _did _know and that being rude to that person was perhaps not the wisest course of action. But the cloud over his judgment quickly obscured that thought, as it already had everything else rational he'd ventured to consider thus far. All he knew now was that Bra was standing in his doorway doing nothing short of asking for a beating and that he was going to give it to her if she didnt spill whatever it was that she wanted to rub his nose in, fast.

As fun as it would have been to mock her brother a little longer, it had taken him so long to get to the door that Bra imagined they were running out of time for this conversation. A pity... She couldn't help but admit that toying with him in a state like this was a pretty good form of entertainment.

Oh well. She would get more out of this later—once he was painfully indebted to her—than she would now, whilst he was just in pain.

With a relenting sigh, Bra flipped a hand nonchalantly in the direction that Trunks had just come from. "Look behind you," she provided.

Trunks's brow tightened dangerously. "Bra, seriously!" he exclaimed, barely biting back his volume. "I am not in the mood to play your games... tell me what you want to say or get the hell out of my room!"

With a roll of the eyes, the younger Briefs sibling crossed her arms over her chest and regarded her brother severely. "I'm _not _playing games, chill out!" she replied. "Good lord, if you would have just turned around like I said, you would have realized why I'm here without causing yourself the extra aneurysm."

What in the hell could she have been talking about? He was just in his room, in bed—considering how used to waking up in troublesome situations he was, he would have noticed already if something had been off. But nothing _was _off, which meant she was fucking around with him, which meant he had no reason not to—

_Oh, SHIT!_

Bra cracked a smirk that would have made Vegeta proud as her older brother belatedly discovered what she had been trying to tip him off about.

There, haphazardly spun in the sheets of his bed was the figure of a petite brunette, still dozing away-one that any resident of the Briefs home could recognize as Trunks's on-again, off-again girlfriend, Reina Li. A gorgeous, but—in Bra's humble opinion—empty-headed girl in her mid-20s, he had met her at one of Capsule Corp.'s Christmas parties when she had come as the date of one of his employees. Needless to say, upon noticing the president's traveling eyes it hadn't taken her long to indulge in a quick upgrade.

Trunks had never fooled Bra in making her think that Reina was anywhere near the sort of girl he went for. Sure, she was beautiful and fawned all over him, but more than anything it seemed to the younger Saiya-jin as if Trunks was much more into the idea of just _having _someone. To buy things for, to be his arm candy around town, to come over at all hours of the night to meet him for an inebriated romp that he'd forget first thing in the morning...

"Shit shit shit shit shit!"

"Ssh," Bra warned, laying a finger to her lips. "Do you really want to wake up Daddy and let him see her here? Or _Mama_?"

He should have been wondering why Bra seemed so eager to keep him out of trouble, but Trunks was suddenly too preoccupied with the feelings of pure dread which could only come from the threat of his mother's disapproval bearing down on him. If she saw Reina here, if she saw him like this, she'd... well, he didn't even want to think about the amount of trouble he was going to be in.

It was no secret that Bulma laid the decline of her precious company on the shoulders of Trunks and his escapades, to the point that she constantly warned him of the not-so-pleasant consequences he'd suffer at her very capable hands if they continued. To have had one of these said escapades under her _roof _was like the ultimate transgression. She was going to _murder _him—or at least, she was going to murder him mentally until she felt like handing him over to his father, who would then proceed to _actually _murder him.

Trunks cradled his head in his hands, fingers digging through disheveled lavender locks. "This is _not _good, I am so dead, I am so—" Suddenly, his head shot up and Trunks looked, wild-eyed, at his sister. "What are you doing standing here? You have to help me!"

"Tsk, not until you get some clothes on, Mister," Bra replied smartly, moving to lean casually against the doorframe.

How it was that Trunks hadn't noticed his state of complete undress until just then flew right over Bra's head entirely. All that she knew was that the shade of crimson that had painted her brother's suddenly mortified face in that instant was the most flawless example of hilarity she had encountered in a long while.

Wasting no time in throwing on his discarded clothes from the night before, Trunks mentally cursed the amused girl still leaning, unperturbed in his doorway. _Where _his sister's evil genes came from he would never know, because he was fairly certain that even his father was not mean enough to hold an entire conversation with him without at least the dignity of a _sheet._

Once he had finally made himself decent, Trunks spun fiercely towards Bra's entirely too relaxed form. _"Now_ will you help?" He couldn't keep the tinge of pleading out of his voice as he took a swift glance at the clock on his bedside table. He had ten minutes before Vegeta woke up to begin his daily training routine, and if this situation hadn't been remedied by that time, his morning could only promise to get a whole lot worse.

Bra snorted lightly at his tone, and at last made her way into the disaster zone her brother had managed to create of his room. Time to stop tormenting him. It _was _getting down to the wire now, and their father certainly couldn't be allowed to find out about this. Why, that would ruin her plan entirely...

As his sister went to work using the very few simple ki techniques she knew to rid the room of all evidence of Trunks's inebriation, he attempted gently to shake his still-sleeping companion awake.

"Come on, Reina, wake up—you have to get out of here," he whispered, a touch desperately.

No good. The nudging did little more to disturb the woman than cause her to groan lightly and shift to her other side. Trunks worried heavily on his bottom lip. Either she was a deep sleeper, or she had indulged the night before more than he had realized.

Well, he could tell immediately that this was not going to work. Waking her up, getting her dressed and getting her out the front door in just under five minutes was just not going to be happening this morning—he'd just have to take her as she was.

With no more thought than to give a fleeting glance to the clock, Trunks collected his girlfriend into his arms, bedding and all, and took off at top speed through the open balcony doors. He'd just have to trust that whatever hideous thing Bra had planned for him when he returned was enough motivation to get her to distract their father for a few minutes until he could return.

That said, considering the way Bra's mind worked, letting Vegeta kill him may not have been the worst option Trunks had available to him upon his return.

It was going to be one hell of a morning.

* * *

By the time he had deposited Reina in her own bed and rushed back to Capsule Corp., it was just under 30 seconds to six.

As Trunks touched down again in his own room, he was immediately assaulted by his lingering hangover rearing its nasty head at him in full force. Now that there was no crisis to distract him from the throbbing in his skull, it appeared that the old monster was back with a vengeance, as if sent straight by his mother herself.

On the plus side, a quick survey of his surroundings brought about relief and satisfaction with Bra's cleaning job—not a single shred of evidence was in sight. The bottles had vanished, sheets were replaced and the large bed made up neatly... Despite his terror for what he was going to have to pay for all of this, he couldn't help but crack a grateful smile.

Well, at least for a split second.

Just then, a stab of pain sliced like a hot knife across his brow and Trunks's face screwed up in discomfort. With a low growl, he collapsed back into a soft chair behind him and pinched the bridge of his nose. Through the murderous haze that the alcohol was imposing upon his senses, he only vaguely felt Bra enter his room and approach him.

"I've got something that'll help with that," she offered cheerily, reaching out and wrapping her fingers around her brother's wrist. Bra gently tugged at him to urge him up from the chair. "Come on, Mister, follow me!"

Groaning but too weary to resist, Trunks lazily allowed himself to be pulled up and out of his bedroom. Once they made it to the hallway and he had indicated that he was following fine on his own, she let go and the siblings descended the staircase into the dining room, Bra practically hopping two steps at a time while her brother trailed miserably behind her.

Desperate to do nothing more than fall in a hole and die, Trunks immediately flopped into one of the chairs, burying his head in his arms on the table. As he reveled in the darkness he'd created around himself, his amplified senses honed in on the sound of his father's footsteps the floor above and he wondered if he could fall asleep again right then and there if he just focused... focused on something else besides all of the pounding... something besides—

"What's wrong with you, boy?"

Vegeta's snorted greeting drew no response from his son, who was silently wondering how he hadn't noticed the older man come downstairs. Not that it really mattered. It was too late now to make himself appear chipper and presentable for the sake of bolstering the illusion that nothing had occurred the previous night, and at that point Trunks wasnt sure he cared. Kami, where was Bra with whatever she had promised that would make this go away...

_"Boy_, I asked you a question!" Vegeta growled, his arms moving to cross over his chest. Who did the brat think he was, ignoring him? Had this been Vegeta-sei and he been his own father, such disrespect would have never been tolerated. "I am not going to ask you again—_what_ is—"

"Oh! Good morning, Daddy!"

As if carried in on a wave of fresh air, Bra's sudden presence sent a wash of calm over the building tension in the dining room. Vegeta's agitated brow did not falter—when did it ever?—but instantly it was evident that his son's impertinence had become a secondary priority.

Not one for being caught chirping hello's, Vegeta nodded in his daughter's direction to acknowledge her presence. "You're awake early, brat," he observed, not without a hint of suspicion. "Why is the older brat acting oddly?"

"Oh, no reason!" Bra beamed, the cogs of her mind turning out a good lie even as she spoke. "Trunks just woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, so I was making him something to help him feel better."

With that, she set down a glass she had been holding, filled to the brim with a viscous yellow-brown liquid, in front of the debilitated man at the table. Vegeta's nose instantly turned upwards in something akin to disgust as Bra nudged her brother to grab his attention.

"Here, drink this."

Trunks slowly lifted his head, barely considering the glass or its contents as he raised it to his lips. A second later he regretted his actions—the tart, acidic taste left him coughing violently and it was all he could do to prevent spitting it across the table. Suddenly feeling much more awake, Trunks took a wrathful spin towards his sister.

"What the hell, are you trying to poison me!" he cried. "What's _in_ this!"

Bra mustered up her most innocent eyes as she touched a finger to her chin thoughtfully. "Oh, I think there's some aspirin, cysteine, vitamins B and C, bananas, tomato juice...strawberries, honey, orange juice, milk... oh, and some salt and nutmeg too!" she rattled off before turning stern. "Anyway, it's not supposed to taste good, its _supposed_ to help, so shut up and drink up."

Trunks's stomach physically churned and he suddenly felt sicker than ever... but he had been an adult long enough to know the ingredients of a classic hangover cure when he heard them. Still, couldn't she have _tried_ to make it taste decent?

Vegeta watched in horror as the younger warrior held his breath and gulped down the rest of the glass as quickly as possible, edging back the slightest bit in the case that it were to come back up—which, from the offended look on Trunks's face, seemed likely. His eyes followed the now-empty glass on its way down to the table, remainders of its gooey contents hanging still to its sides.

"What in Kami's name is that repulsive concoction supposed to cure?"

"Oh, you know..." Bra paused a moment, quickly formulating a story once again. She had only thought as far as that Trunks was sick, not _what _pretend ailment he had been afflicted with. "I mean, you know... just, um... just morning sickness!"

The moment the words came out of her mouth, she mentally smacked herself.

Trunks paled. Had she _seriously_ just said that!

Vegeta's eyes immediately narrowed, dull with misgiving. "Isn't that the name of the condition the woman complained about when carrying you brats?"

_Oh no_, thought Bra. She had sputtered out that stupid lie, so she was going to have to be the one to come up with an explanation for it. What could she tell him, what could she tell him—

"Uh, well, it _was!"_ she laughed uneasily. "But... men can get it too, like when they're too stressed and stuff! You know, in the morning. _Morning_ sickness, get it?"

The scrutinizing look Vegeta gave his daughter said that he clearly suspected her of insanity. However, after a long survey of her nervous expression, he only scoffed. What did he know? The Prince of all Saiya-jin had no reason to care about these human afflictions.

"Whatever." The warrior spun around and stalked off in the direction of the yard, home to his infamous Gravity Chamber. "When you are over your human weaknesses, come out to train, brat," he addressed Trunks over his shoulder.

The kitchen door swung against its frame with a sharp _snap_, and then they were alone.

"_Are you fucking serious?_"

Bra giggled lightly, running a hand awkwardly through her hair. "Hey, it was the first thing I thought of. It's not like Daddy knows any better," she justified. "Anyway, how's your head?"

It was only then that Trunks had noticed—now that he was no longer busy being mortified by Bra's terrible lying skills-the diminishing pain in his skull. Surprised tinted his features. "I feel... Its gone," he said, sending his sister a look of mild wonder. "That's amazing."

Unfortunately, the amazement was short-lived. Although she may have succeeded in distracting him up until that point, one question still lingered heavily in the air between the two siblings... and now that he could think clearly, she certainly was not going to get away thinking that she had him fooled.

Bra raised an eyebrow at Trunks in response to his suddenly narrowed eyes. "What's with the look?" she asked, feeling the slightest bit uncomfortable with the scrutiny of his glare.

"Two questions."

"Uh, shoot, I guess?"

"First of all," Trunks said, licking his lips, "How _did_ you get a hold of a hangover remedy?"

Bra waved off the question with a hand, quickly relaxing. Pssh, and here she'd thought she was in trouble for something. "Not hard," she explained. "Mom keeps one in the cabinet—you're _so _not the only one in the house who's ever needed a strong drink after work."

Well, he could accept that answer. Still, Trunks didnt really care to venture the step further and ask _why_ Bra knew there was a hangover remedy in the cabinet. There were some things which, as a big brother, he was better off not knowing about.

"Okay then. My second question..." Even before it passed his lips, Trunks knew he was going to regret asking. "What am I going to be paying for this morning? I'm sure I don't want to know, so you had better just spill it fast."

Bra's lips twitched up into her signature impish grin, indicating that she had no intention of hiding what she had up her sleeve this time around. Trunks felt a sense of mild dread wash over him.

"Weeeeeell," she began, drawing out the word mischievously, "as you know, Pan and I needed to get out again today to finish off the shopping for her party. So I figured... a favor might repay a favor."

Bra went around the back of Trunks's chair and threw her arms around her brother's shoulders from behind, leaning her head sweetly against his. "You know, I keep your late-night rendezvous with Reina a secret from Mom and Dad and you play chauffeur for the day. How's that sound for a deal!"

She must have been enjoying this enormously, Trunks thought in dismay. His sister could have not come up with a worse payback right then. Considering his current plan to avoid a certain raven-haired quarter Saiya-jin at all costs, this was _the _last thing he felt like doing, and Bra knew it. She had also been far too pleased about those kids who had shown up the night before last and there was no doubt in his mind that she was one of the premiere members in the Tell Pan Now club. If his sister was trying to hide the fact that she hoped somehow their being stuck together for a day would make him spill the news to their friend, she was doing a rotten job of it.

"You're a real bitch sometimes, you know that?" his voice rumbled darkly as he rose from his seat, forcing Bra's hold on him to break. This was _not _okay. None of his family understood how serious this situation was, and truthfully, he resented them a little for trying to force this on him like they knew how it felt. Did they _want_ this to get worse than it already was?

Although Trunks had begun to stalk back up the staircase, Bra appeared entirely unabashed by the reaction. "So I take that as a 'Yes, dearest sister, I would love such a chance to do you this favor! I'll be ready in 30 minutes!'" she chirped after him.

He did not answer, but there was no need. The both of them knew that rejecting this was simply not an option if Trunks didn't want to be in more trouble than he already was.

As he reached his bedroom and slammed his door, Trunks wondered if his dad was ready for that spar yet.

He really needed to punch something.

**Capsule Corporation**

**(Future Timeline)**

She had never been so utterly worn out in her life.

Using a forearm to wipe the sweat away from her forehead, Pan leaned back into her seat and closed her eyes. For the first time in Kami knew how many hours, she set down her tool kit and surveyed the fruits of her labor.

After nearly two straight days of toil, the control panel of the time machine was tentatively complete, as well as all the circuitry to which it connected. The next step would be to check out any work that needed to be done on the engine and fuel supply, make the proper connections there, and they would hopefully be in business.

Easier said than done, though, she thought with a frown. No one could possibly understand the depth of Bulma Briefs's genius until they attempted the tackling of one of her projects. Despite the detailed directions she had received in the form of file logs and blueprints, Pan had felt out of her league within the first five minutes of laying her hands on the machine.

"Good. You're finally taking a break."

With the familiarity of the voice and ki that had just resonated throughout the cavernous lab, Pan did not have to move from her relaxed position to know that the speaker had been her husband. Good thing, too. With the way her muscles were suddenly all throbbing at once, she was pretty sure she couldn't have moved even if she had wanted to.

"For a minute," she replied, closing her eyes and leaning further back into the cushions of the roomy cockpit seat. Pan felt the leather bow next to her as Trunks lifted himself up beside her and, without looking, she leaned over to rest her head against one broad shoulder.

Gently, he reached his arm around the back of her neck and brushed dark fringe behind his wife's ear. "You're ridiculous," he breathed against the top of her head. His tone was soaked in disapproval. "You've been working for over 24 hours now. Let it go for the night."

Pan scrunched her nose in distaste at the suggestion. No matter how badly she ached or how tired she got, nothing could keep the mental image of her children, scared and in unfamiliar territory, from the forefront of her mind. With motivation like that, she was certain she could work until the end of time if that's what it took to take her to where they were.

"I'm fine," she insisted, opening her eyes to shoot Trunks a stern look. "I pulled longer nights than this after the twins were born. I'm good for at least another twelve hours."

Still, despite her convincing tone, he knew his wife and her limits. He could see the dullness of sleep deprivation tinging those normally lively onyx eyes, red cracks beginning to form around the edges. Her tireless spirit was what emitted from her mouth—her body told a different tale.

Unfortunately, they were all limited by their bodies. If their spirits did all the fighting, they wouldn't have to be sitting there at all in the first place.

"Don't make me fight you," he cautioned, and she knew he would. If her husband was one thing, it was fiercely protective of the people he had in his life-even with things like this. If he felt like she needed to rest in order to maintain her own well-being, whether he was right or wrong, he would argue endlessly with her to make it happen.

Just the prospect of an argument with the stubborn Saiya-jin made her weary. Still, she knew that she could bang out a few more hours of work yet before she hit her breaking point, and in this situation she was not about to just give in so quickly.

"Trunks, I'm the last person either of us needs to worry about right now," Pan countered, breaking their contact to raise her brow at him. He knew what she meant: the kids were paramount, not her. "I can go a little more."

"Pan." Trunks's voice carried warning tones. He was not having it.

"Trunks," she replied in the same manner.

For the longest time, the pair simply stared at one another, each trying their best to wear the other down. Finally, it was Trunks who spoke.

Sighing heavily, he ran a hand back through his overgrown hair. His gaze had gone from stern to pleading. "Just a few hours, please?" he implored her. "Even if your body can hold up, your brain has got to rest sometime. You're no use here if you can't even think properly."

"I can think fine," she defended quickly. Too quickly.

"Then what was with all the frustration I felt earlier?" he ventured, knowingly. "I know I wasn't imagining all those times you made a miscalculation and had to go back. You were reading as clearly as a children's book."

He had her there, and Pan shifted uncomfortably. She hadn't realized she had been projecting so much, but with the kids gone and all the work to be done, she supposed she hadn't been watching herself as closely as usual.

"Your mother's shoes aren't exactly easy to step into," she responded, continuing to argue nonetheless. She could feel this battle slipping through her fingers, but Pan's stubbornness could not allow her to relent until all hope had gone. "Of course I've been making mistakes."

He would have liked to shake her at that point. One hand on her shoulder tightened as he attempted to contain his frustration with his hard-headed wife.

"Staying here won't hurt you, but you'll get next to nothing done," he stated seriously. "If you rest and come back fresh, you'll do more than make up that time before you know it. My mom would say the same thing if she were here right now."

Leaning forward, Trunks rested his forehead against Pan's, staring deep into her fatigued eyes. Even so weary, they were stunning. His gaze softened.

_"Please_," he emphasized a final plea.

Damn him, looking at her like that. There were two things she couldn't say no to in the world: her children when they were upset and a pitifully begging Trunks. It was those sad, beseeching eyes that had made it so impossible to turn him away when they had first met, and they still cut into her just as deep as ever now.

Reluctant but resigned, it was Pan who this time broke their gaze with a sigh. "Fine," she consented at last. Pulling away from her husband, she stood up slowly, cringing at the stiffness in her muscles. When she was finally fully upright, she tilted her head to frown at him solemnly. "But _only_ for a few hours. I'm setting an alarm."

Although he would have preferred a full night's sleep, Trunks was too pleased to have gotten Pan to agree to anything to protest. Nodding, he stood alongside her and offered his hand, pulling her into the air for the short descent back to the ground. He knew she could do it herself, but given the lack of objection he received for the action, he didn't think she or her body minded the small gesture of aid.

Before Pan left the lab, the demi-Saiya-jin gave the machine a once-over from the ground, scratching down in a mental notebook where she was in her progress. She knew Trunks would probably do work while she was gone, so it was more important than ever to know where she had been. It wasn't that she didn't trust him... It was just better safe than sorry, in case they needed to backtrack.

Rapidly growing impatient with his wife, Trunks applied his palm to her back, physically nudging her out the door. "Go!" he commanded, ignoring the indignant glare she shot him over her shoulder.

With one final huff, Pan stalked, slowly, sorely out into the hallway in search of an intact bed. Stupid man.

**Son Home**

**(Present Timeline)**

"Panny, this is the _last _time. Get up!"

From the bottom of the staircase, a stern Videl stood glaring upwards with her hands on her hips and a tightened brow. Yelling for her daughter to wake up three or four different times was practically a morning ritual anymore, but that didn't make it any less frustrating. With the kind of trouble it took just to get her to rise in the morning, you would never know the girl in question was about to turn 20.

_"Mooooooooom__!"_ came the expected whine. For a moment there was a rustle from the upstairs hallway, and then the soft sound of bare feet against wooden flooring. A minute later, a sleepy quarter Saiya-jin emerged from around the corner to stand at the top of the stairs, hair tussled and still rubbing a fist at the sleep dust in her eyes. "Do you know what time it is?"

"Seven o' clock, so yes," Videl responded. "And about time for you to get up."

_No, _Pan thought indignantly, it most certainly wasn't.

"But _why?"_ she continued to whine, pouting now.

"Bra just called, said she and Trunks are on their way to come pick you up," Videl reminded her. "She said she discussed this with you yesterday."

Pan raised a hand to scratch her head, further disheveling her already messy raven locks. Call it selective memory or just sleepiness, but she didn't _remember_ Bra saying anything about plans for the day. Then again, after how her visit to the Briefs home had ended the night before, it was entirely possible that she had managed to block out everything else.

"G'morning, Pan!"

The familiar voice which had interrupted her thoughts was a welcome change to the current situation. A few seconds later, Goten appeared next to her mother at the bottom of the stairs, waving up to his niece even as he lodged a piece of toast in his mouth.

Goten always seemed to drop by around breakfast time anymore. From what they could gather, there had been an unfortunate mishap in his own home having to do with a wall, a flower bed, a toaster and an energy blast. None of them knew the exact details of the debacle, only that ChiChi had put her youngest son on probation from her cooking for a while, meaning there was rarely a meal at Gohan and Videl's home that did not include Goten.

Her mother often complained, but honestly, his presence made Pan a little more relaxed. It could be hard being the only child, and when he was around it was almost like having an older brother of her own.

This morning, however, not even the presence of her favorite family member could cause her to be enthused. The more Pan felt her veil of lethargy lift, the more she realized just how much she did not want to go through with this day that Bra had planned.

As she descended the stairs and passed her uncle, she muttered a greeting under her breath before flopping into one of the kitchen chairs, arms crossed.

From across the table, her father set down his paper, viewing Pan from over the top of his glasses. "You don't seem very lively this morning." Gohan knew his daughter, and despite not being a morning person it was still odd to see her acting so apathetically.

"That's because it's too damn early to go shopping," she growled, shooting the far wall a glare.

Three pairs of eyebrows rose in surprise at the vulgarity that had come from her mouth, and Gohan instantly shot a glare in his brother's direction. After all, _his _little girl didnt speak that way, even at her age.

"Heh heh... whoa now, Panny... _I _didn't teach you to talk like that!" Goten emphasized in between nervous laughter. Conscious of Gohan's heavy scrutiny bearing down upon him, he made his way over to the table and sat down—but not before pointedly kicking his niece's chair as he passed. If he upset his brother and Videl, he'd get banned from eating there too. Did she want him to starve!?

Pan's glare joined her father's upon being jolted, although she knew she should feel worse than she did. After all, Goten hadn't taught her that word... Much worse, yes, but not _that_ one specifically.

As Videl placed the heaping plates of food on the table and joined her family, the two men appeared to immediately forget the situation at hand in favor of devouring their breakfasts. Pan, on the other hand, picked up her fork only to poke at the topmost pancake on the pile in front of her, feeling strangely devoid of desire to put any of it in her mouth.

Even through his frenzied eating, Gohan managed to notice his daughter's peculiar behavior. "What's wrong, Pan?" he asked, seeming genuinely concerned-and considering he had stopped stuffing his face, he truly must have been.

"Oh... I guess I'm just not hungry."

Goten, overhearing, dropped his fork and spoon with a loud _clang._ His mouth nearly gaped. _"Not hungry?"_ With the amount of shock layered in her uncle's voice, she might as well have just informed him that the earth was flat. He couldn't seem to begin to wrap his mind around such a preposterous idea as a Saiya-jin not being hungry. "That's not possible."

"I'm not hungry, alright?" she snapped quickly, standing up forcefully enough to push her chair back. "I'm going to go get dressed."

All three adults left at the table shared a look as the youngest stalked back up towards her room, confusion hanging heavily in the air. After a long moment, Goten pursed his lips and pushed his chair back as well, heading in the trajectory his niece had taken before him. "I'll talk to her," he offered as he bounded two steps at a time up to the home's second story and down the hall towards Pan's bedroom.

The door was ajar and he peeked in tentatively before nudging it open all the way. Pan was there, not changing clothes, but simply sitting on the edge of her bed with her eyes turned towards the floor. A cloud of trouble masked her face, somehow a different feeling than the apathy she had presented just moments before. Goten suddenly felt ten times as concerned as he had been. It wasn't hard to tell that something was really getting to the youngest member of the Son family.

"Can I sit?" he asked hesitantly. Pan did not raise her eyes to acknowledge him, only nodded, frowning into the ground.

The bed bowed gently beside her and her uncle's clothing brushed against her right arm. The closeness of a man she trusted and loved as much as her uncle Goten sent an inexplicable sense of calm washing through her body, and as if sensing that he was on the right track, he pulled an arm around her shoulders. She knew that he would be there when she felt like talking, even if it took an hour.

Fortunately for his growling stomach, Pan did not intend to keep her feelings hidden for quite so long.

"I really don't get him sometimes."

Goten raised his brow and glanced at her sideways. "Who?"

"Trunks," she provided plainly, as if he should have known what she was talking about. Actually, he probably should have. Goten frowned.

"What about him now?"

"I don't know!" she muttered, sounding exasperated. "He was all friendly with me just two days ago and now suddenly I feel like I've got the plague with the way he's acting around me. It's like he can't stay in the same room for five minutes! He won't even look at me, Goten, and I don't know why!"

Goten opened his mouth to speak, but Pan kept on rambling. "We're such good friends and now out of the blue he can't even speak a word to me, not even 'good morning'. Yesterday, I walked into breakfast and he literally just stood up and walked away in a huff. Bra said it's nothing, but I keep thinking it's _not _nothing and I just—I want to scream!"

She took a deep breath and let it out. "And now he's coming here to spend the day with me and I don't know what it's all about."

Well, Goten couldn't say that he had been prepared for the surge of information that had just emitted from his little niece. Sure, he had been absent the day before, but surely if Pan had upset his best friend in some way he would have heard about it from Trunks already, right?

But he found himself agreeing with her—it was weird, too weird to simply brush off as nothing. Ever since the two of them had come back from their adventures in space a little over five years prior, Goten had never seen Trunks or Pan pointedly _avoid _the other over something.

Still, he couldn't let her on to his concerns. With the storminess of the mood that this had put her in, Goten imagined it wasn't the best idea to worry her further by voicing his own surprise.

So instead, Goten did what he did best: he cracked a silly grin and tried to lighten the mood. "Hey, don't you think you're getting a little too distraught over Trunks?" he joked. "If you're mad at him, just go beat him up or something!"

"What? I—" Caught off guard by the question and taking it much more seriously than he had intended, Pan's face immediately painted a brilliant crimson. "I don't know... I guess I'm just too confused to think of punching his lights out just yet."

Although he had embarrassed her, her uncle made a valid point. Why _was_ she so worked up over this? Truthfully, she had barely considered the idea of violence to solve the issue, and that certainly was not a normal reaction for her short temper to tolerate.

"I was just joking," Goten assured her. However, there was no missing that blush on her cheeks. Knowing what he did about his best friend and niece's relationship was enough to compel him to treat the situation with an iota more care. "But if you want me to, I can tag along today and talk to him about it."

For the first time that morning, Pan's normal light sparked up in her eyes and Goten felt a rush of self-pride. _Bingo._

"Really?"

"Really really," Goten nodded. "He's my best friend, I'm sure if anything's up I'm the one who can get it out of hi—"

Goten was abruptly cut off by a suffocating pair of arms throwing themselves around his neck and the sincerest of thank you's being showered down upon his ears. He laughed light-heartedly and tightened his arm around his niece momentarily before allowing her to pull back.

"Well, I'll let you get ready then," he told her, standing up and backing out of the bedroom. He was met with no protest at the idea, and felt a sense of relief that one crisis had been averted for the day. At least she would be alright for the time being, until he got a chance to work the story of what had happened out of his friend.

But as he stood in the hallway, Goten stopped and frowned again, unable to shake this feeling that had set down upon him from the moment he had heard what was going on.

For some reason he couldn't explain, it just felt like shit was about to hit the fan.

* * *

**A/N:** Whoo, here I am with the final rewritten chapter of this fic! From now on the material will be entirely fresh and I have it all plotted out. I graduated college a few days ago and I'm LOVING the new feeling of freedom to pick up stuff like this that I hadn't been able to touch while held down by school.

If you notice, I only updated this story when I had a break from school now I'm done for good. As I'm not doing much RPing anymore, I really want to continue to refine my writing by pursuing this goal of mine to write a multi-chapter fic to its end. I dont want to get rusty! Thanks everyone for sticking with me yet again. It's only been about six toseven months since I last updated, which is better than a year between updates at least! But from now on, I'm gonna do my best with pursuing this like I haven't been able to do since I was younger.

**BY THE WAY,** I wrote a short 2,000 word drabble earlier this week from the POV of Mirai Trunks from this fic. It takes place a few months after the conception of Musume and deals with his feelings around that time. I will explore more of his and Mirai Pans past in this fic, but I got inspired and had to write something down! So consider it a small present for not having updated this for so long. Go check it out, it's on my profile listed as _Take Out All the Rest. _R+R is much appreciated for both this and that!

**Reviewer Responses:**

_RKR: _Haha yeah, I do have it plotted out how everythings going to play out. Although that's a pretty funny idea! I dont think its quite in-character workable for what I'm going for with my plot, but I totally wish I could do that lol! Thank you so much for revisiting this fic, I'm so amazed by the number of people who remember it from so long ago!

_Gue22: _One of the greats? That's so flattering and entirely untrue Im sure lol! I even look back at what I wrote in this re-write (as some of the re-write is a few years old already) and some of it makes me cringe. Maybe I'll just never be totally happy, haha.

Anyway, yes, I had hoped that this version would feel more mature. I wrote the first one when I was only about 16 years old and I'm 22 now, so I feel my perception of people and in return characters has shifted and grown a lot as I've grown up. I'm hoping for a more adult feel to the story this time around and to refine my writing to be more accurate to their current ages than I may have been back when I first devised the idea for the story.

_Kansiwa__: _No offense taken! Your question is valid, but I think we may have a misunderstanding in wording thats causing it. The re-write portion of this is only re-writing what I already had done in the original story, not actually reworking the plot entirely or anything. A different feeling, more hammered out scenes and characters, better grammar and spelling, working out plot holes/kinks that would have caused issues later on, etc. After this chapter, everything will be fresh material, but I didn't want to change the basic structure of what I had already established. Otherwise it'd be a different story, and that's not the aim!

As the reviewer above you noted, it is a more sad and serious feeling this time around. I feel like the older story connects with the 16-year-old me who wrote it, while this version connects more with the 22-year-old me who is writing it now. Being that-apart from the children-all the characters are 20 or older, I can speak from experience that it IS a more accurate spin on the feelings of people in that age group.

Not everyone will be pleased with this one and not everyone will be pleased with the other, but the most important thing is that _I _am much more satisfied with it. I would hope others are pleased as well, but I don't blame anyone who likes the other better, nor does it offend me. Different strokes for different folks, after all! (Thanks for critiquing, btw, haha I can always use a lil bit of brush-up on the skill of defending my own work.)


	7. 06: Game of Secrets

**A Place** **in Time**

**Chapter Six; Game of Secrets**

**Caelestis Kibeth**

_"Really really," Goten nodded. "He's my best friend. I'm sure if anything's up I'm the one who can get it out of hi-"_

_Goten was abruptly cut off by a suffocating pair of arms throwing themselves around his neck and the sincerest of thank you's being showered down upon his ears. He laughed light-heartedly and tightened his arm around his niece momentarily before allowing her to pull back._

_"Well, I'll let you get ready then," he told her, standing up and backing out of the bedroom. He was met with no protest at the idea, and felt a sense of relief that one crisis had been averted for the day. At least she would be alright for the time being, until he got a chance to work the story of what had happened out of his friend._

_But as he stood in the hallway, Goten stopped and frowned again, unable to shake this feeling that had set down upon him from the moment he had heard what was going on._

_For some reason he couldn't explain, it just felt like shit was about to hit the fan._

_**West City Bar**_

_**(Present**_ _**Timeline)**_

"A long day" didn't really even begin to cover it.

Although Goten could say with certainty that his own discomfort over the events of the past eight hours had been nothing compared to those of the lavender-haired man professionally downing a highball across the table, he thought he at least had grounds to say the day had been _long. _Long, at the very _least._

Glancing over his own glass curiously, he pretended to drink as an excuse to observe his best friend more closely. Despite Pan's forewarning of what was to come, somehow Goten hadn't imagined that the difference of 48 hours could leave Trunks Briefs so suddenly out of sorts. This only deepened his concern further. Before, his worry had been for his distraught and perhaps in-love niece who was frustrated that she was being avoided without explanation. Now, everything was doubled, because there was no way that Goten _couldn't_ feel at least a slight panic at seeing the upset state of his closest friend.

The half-sarcastic, half-serious thought flashed across his mind that Trunks and Pan were really perfect for each other. Their moods seemed to so heavily impact one another's that if one of them could just find a way to be happy, neither would ever mope another day in their lives.

Finally returning his untouched glass to the tabletop with a muffled _clink_, Goten laid his hands out in front of him and fixed Trunks with an uncharacteristically serious look. The action went unnoticed, but it was no matter. Trunks _would _be paying attention and spilling what was wrong with him before the night was over, whether he knew it or not. You didn't get by with treating his little niece like a ghost and not have a good explanation for it, and he was determined to hear what it was.

Trunks had an explanation, Goten knew that. And it was going to be revealed, come Hell or high water.

"You sure seem to be enjoying that."

"Hm?"

As if startled from a daydream, Trunks's eyes popped open from behind the glass in his hand and focused slowly on the man across the table. Of course, Goten had been the one to suggest they come here in the first place, but it was as if for a moment Trunks had almost forgotten that he was there at all. After the ordeal he had been put through that day by his witch of a younger sister, his mind and willpower were left dangling by a thread. Could he really be blamed that all he wanted to do was get lost in a bottle and fall asleep?

Then again, Goten wasn't exactly privy to any of what was going on in his head. He didn't know anything. He _shouldn't _know anything... but somewhere deep down, Trunks's conscience felt a pang of guilt at being such insufferable company all day. Goten, after all, wasn't the one he couldn't stand to be around at the moment.

Trunks lowered his glass for a split second before rethinking the action and quickly tilting it back again, drawing the last remnants of the amber liquid from the bottom. The warrior set his empty drink on the table and casually tossed up a couple of fingers to signal to one of the staff that he would be needing another. Finally, he faced his friend full-on, not bothering to hide the weariness painted across his features.

"Sorry," he muttered half-heartedly. "Just needed that."

Now that he had Trunks's attention, Goten wasted no time in raising a brow to display his suspicion. There was no need to skirt around the issue. The two men, friends since childhood, could talk directly with one another about anything as long as the other was willing to talk about whatever it was. If they were determined to keep something to themselves, the discussion ended with a volley of punches being thrown until both were too tired to go on, and they collapsed to the ground and _then _talked about it.

He really hoped that it didn't come to that this time. The last thing he needed was to come home all bloody with ruined clothes and have one _more _reason for his mother to be angry with him. So, praying for the best, he took a deep breath and opened his mouth._  
_

"Question."

"Shoot."

"Just wondering why you were a complete prick today is all."

"That wasn't a question."

Goten let out a sigh and leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. He was somewhat consciously aware of the untouched drink in front of him. If this was how they were starting out, he might need it in a few seconds.

"You know what I mean," he answered impatiently, tapping his fingers on his arm.

Trunks bit his tongue to reign in another smart remark, only extending the courtesy because it was Goten he was talking to. He might have barely been able to tolerate his family at this point in time, but Goten hadn't done anything—yet, anyway. Truthfully, it would have taken a load off his chest to be able to spill the entire turbulent events of two nights before right there, to someone he trusted.

And therein lie the problem.

For the first time in his life, Trunks wasn't sure he could trust Goten.

His gut was pulling him forward, practically forcing the words to describe all the pure insanity that had somehow occurred up from his throat and onto his tongue. But his mind stopped them right in their tracks—his logical mind, which told him that, best friend or not, this was Gohan's little brother sitting across from him right then. Pan's uncle, who was known for his kind but protective streak, especially when it came to the boys she periodically brought around. So how did he expect someone like that to react to him telling them that, somewhere in another time, he had knocked up his little niece not just once, but _twice_, and married her, despite her being a teenager and he being 14 years her senior?_  
_

How would he react if the tables were turned, and it was Bra and some guy?

He'd fucking jump across the table and rip their head fresh off their body, that's what.

_Curse it all._ A waitress came over and set a fresh drink down in front of him, but instead of reaching for it, Trunks put his hands over his face, rubbing harshly. He let out a low growl that sounded scarily like his father's, and Goten involuntarily recoiled a couple inches before returning to his former knit-brow expression.

After a long moment, the younger Saiya-jin having given up on Trunks being able to pursue this subject on his own, relented and spoke again. "Come on, man," he nearly pleaded. This was getting just plain scary now. A knot was beginning to form in the pit of his stomach that said that whatever this was that had Trunks basically speechless was bound to be earth-shattering. "We've been best friends our whole lives. Are you really going to start keeping secrets now?"

Trunks shook his head and dropped his hand, sending Goten a look of pure exhaustion and desperation. Like he didn't have anywhere to turn. Like he had literally backed himself into a corner and there was no way out.

"Trunks..."

"I'm a father."

Goten, who had finally reached down to take a sip of his drink, nearly choked.

Trunks pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of the coughing and sputtering his best friend was doing just feet away. And because he didn't want to see the wide-eyed look he knew was coming once he recovered.

Goten, his voice rough from the burn the alcohol had left in his throat, wiped a hand across his face and—right on cue—gaped at his friend. "You have got to be kidding me!" he hissed, conscious to keep his volume low in case anyone was listening in. A story like this was the last thing the press needed to get a hold of. "What in the fuck, mate, I thought you said you were _careful—_"

"I _am_," Trunks shot back defensively, lowering his hand to shoot him a glare. Sighing, he ran the same hand nervously back through his hair. How in the hell did he word something like this? "_I _am..."

For as many things that flew right over Goten's head on a regular basis, the most important things usually didn't—and he certainly caught the other warrior's sudden change in tone and emphasis just then.

Didn't mean he understood what the asshole was talking about, though. So, setting his drink down—and distancing it from himself for good measure this time—Goten shot Trunks an expectant look. "I'm waiting for you to make sense of this any second now," he pushed. "Any damn time you're ready—"

"It's sort of hard to make sense of—"

"Then I'd suggest you just start talking and see where it takes you."

For the second time in as many minutes, Trunks sent that seething glare across the table. Unfortunately for him, it was not long-lived. He possessed neither the energy nor the mindset at the moment to argue with yet another person, and this was perhaps the only person who might understand and take his side.

_Or_ Goten could fly into a rage and murder him in cold blood right there in the restaurant for what he was about to say. Now that he thought about it, neither of these options really sounded all too bad, given the circumstances...

"Look," he finally relented, sending a few surreptitious glances towards the other clientele to make sure they were otherwise occupied before he began. "What I'm about to tell you—I don't care what you have to do or say to me about it, but—if you so much as _whimper _a word of this to anyone..."

Goten shifted uncomfortably in his seat and leaned his elbows on the wood finish of the table, meeting Trunks's eyes dead-on. As much as the sinking feeling in his chest was telling him that he would probably regret staying for this conversation, somewhere he also knew that he needed to hear it.

"Okay. Spill it, then."

**Son Home**

_**(Present Timeline)**_

When the sound of the front door opening finally reverberated throughout the Son family living room at around nine o' clock that evening, Gohan had already been waiting for ten minutes and sixteen—no, seventeen—seconds.

Dragging his eyes from his watch to focus on the dimly lit entry way as a petite, raven-haired girl lazily kicked off her shoes and hung up her jacket, he pursed his lips tightly and closed the book in his lap. Although the novel had been open since his wife had gone up to bed just a bit earlier, not a single page had been turned, not a single word absorbed. Gohan hadn't been intending to read at all in the first place, truth be told. The book was nothing more than a ruse, to convince Videl that he _wasn't _staying awake now in order to try and 'pry' into the teenaged dramas of their 'little girl.'

_"She's only going to shut you out."_ Videl's stern words echoed in his mind. _"Just leave her be. Let your brother handle it."_

It wasn't like he didn't trust his wife's instincts or his brother's competency—well, maybe he doubted the latter just a _little_—when it came to matters having to do with Pan. They were usually pretty well in-tune with what the girl was thinking and what she needed in times of trauma; whether it be boy troubles, broken hearts, or simply not getting her way.

But how could he just sit by and watch her moping around like she had that morning?

This was his little girl. No matter how old she got, no matter how tall she grew or how strong she became, Pan was Gohan's _little girl. _And the way she had been acting had not been just her regular, flippant moping—that much he could sense as a father. Even as he watched her then, with her lack of posture and exhaustion rolling off of her in waves, he knew that it was not some momentary fit that she had been throwing earlier that day.

So he _was_ there to pry. Sue him.

So occupied with her own thoughts that she didn't sense her father's presence in the room, it took Gohan clearing his throat to draw her eyes over to where he sat. Pan looked up in mild surprise, before forcing a feeble smile.

"Oh, Papa," she greeted, nervously running the fingers of one hand through her wind-whipped hair. Having been hoping to clear her head, she had sent Bra back to the city with the car and ended up taking off into the cold air to get home. "What are you still doing up?"

Raising the book in the air, he smiled quietly at her, attempting to act as normally as possible. If there was one thing Pan hated, it was feeling like people were worried about her, Gohan knew that. With the inhuman strength of the majority of the people surrounding her at all times, she had been determined practically from birth to show everyone that she could hold her own. As she had grown up, Gohan and Videl had noticed that this tendency was not just one to prove her physical prowess, but her emotional stability as well.

Unfortunately for Pan, despite her strength—which had undoubtedly grown steadily throughout the years with her dedication to her training—she was not quite as robust when it came to keeping her emotions a secret from others.

"Oh," she answered, eyeing the book for a moment. "Well, I'm going to head to bed."

"Already?"

Pan, who had been ready to head for the stairs, turned her head back towards her father again and raised her brow. "Yeah, why?"

Gohan shifted uncomfortably in his chair, feeling already as if his charade were coming crashing down on him. _This _is why Videl and Goten usually handled these things... Yes, he remembered now.

"Well, it's—sort of early for you, isn't it?"

Pan frowned and tilted her head towards Gohan, looking on with sudden suspicion.

No, not suspicion. Knowing.

"I really don't wanna talk about it, Papa." Her voice carried warning tones.

Gohan let out a sigh and laid his novel on the side table. He stood up from his chair, scratching his head as he closed the distance between them. He stopped a couple feet from his daughter, standing awkwardly without really being sure what he wanted to say to her. He knew that, whatever she was hiding, the ever-stubborn Pan was not about to let him be privy to it. But his father's heart was pushing him to say something, anything to her that might ease this mysterious pain that she was so intent upon keeping bottled up inside—

"I love you, you know that?"

Pan blinked and suddenly looked up to meet her father's concerned eyes. She had been bracing herself for an argument, and all he was going to say was that he loved her? Surely this was not the same dad who she had grown up knowing. If this had been _her _father, he would have pushed and persuaded in all of the wrong ways until she had stormed off and ended the conversation with a slammed door to the face. It wasn't that he ever meant to be insensitive, or that she didn't want to share things with him... Sometimes, they just didn't know how to talk to each other about these kinds of topics.

But this... this was new.

Pan rewarded him with a smile, still strained, but coming a touch easier this time. "I know," she said. Without warning, she reached out and wrapped her arms around his middle, petite frame barely fitting around all the muscle.

Gohan instinctively returned the embrace, raising a hand to pat his daughter's back and placing a kiss on the crown of her head. It was hard to believe that this girl, who he could once hold in one hand, would be turning 20 in just a week's time. As much as he hated to admit it, his baby girl was an adult now. An adult who could take care of her own problems without her daddy there to give a beating to whatever—or whomever—had hurt her.

But if she ever _asked... _

Banishing that thought from his mind for the time being, Gohan gave Pan one final squeeze before releasing her with a bittersweet slowness. "Alright now, get up to bed. You look tired."

Pan nodded, taking full advantage the excuse. She got up on her toes to plant a peck on his cheek quickly before turning her back. "Goodnight, Papa," she called over her shoulder before skipping up the stairs, into the darkness and out of sight.

Gohan shook his head and screwed his eyes shut, feeling a headache suddenly coming on.

Why couldn't he have had a son?

_**West City Bar**_

_**(Present** **Timeline)**_

"Shit, man. I mean—_shit._"

Goten, while aware that he was not expressing himself in the most eloquent manner at the time, found it impossible to call to mind any other words that could possibly fit the rush of unfathomable information that had just been dumped upon him within the past 15 minutes. That said, given the tinge of nervous anticipation that had drained from Trunks's face at his reaction, Goten imagined that his friend probably cared less about how he spoke than the fact that his own head wasn't currently through the brick wall beside them.

"_Shit_," he echoed himself once again, eyes boring into the side of his friend's turned head.

Trunks clenched his fists in his lap, trying to stop the involuntary shaking that had only intensified the further he went into his retelling of the events of the night the children had arrived. He shouldn't be reacting like this, right? Goten seemed to be taking this in the best way he could have hoped for...

But still, to say those words out loud for the first time—to talk about those children—to talk about _Pan—_

It sent his blood pumping and heart racing in a way he couldn't explain. It made him feel light-headed and sick.

"Do you see _now _why I can't talk to her?" He cursed the slight tremor remaining in his voice. With a grunt of agitation—at his own weakness or at the situation, even he wasn't sure—he released the building pressure in one of his fists and grabbed his drink, nearly shattering the glass as he did so. He threw it back, ignoring the disgusting watered-down taste the melted ice had left, before meeting his friend's gaze.

Goten shifted in his chair and took a swig out of his own glass—certainly he deserved it too, after all that. A hand went up to scratch the side of his head nervously. This was indeed a very tangled mess that Trunks was in, but—

"Well, yeah..." he began, not sure how to put his thoughts into words. Goten had never been very good with words. "I mean, I get why you're avoiding her, but—"

"But?"

_But I'm going to have to kick your ass if you put my niece through any more of your angsty crap when she had nothing to do with this?_

No, that probably wouldn't go over well. Goten figured that his friend's extreme mood had less to do with this particular event and more to do with a mix of all of these stress-inducing situations his life had been throwing at him. Still, he felt like he was practically sitting face-to-face with a ticking time bomb. This was going to take some care.

"_But_ do you really think it's fair to punish Pan over something that's not her fault?" he spoke slowly, rolling the words around in his mouth first. "Something she doesn't even know about?"

"I'm not trying to punish Pan—" Trunks was quick to the defensive.

Okay, now that was enough. Was he really that dumb?

Delicateness already abandoned, Goten fixed his friend with a stern look that forced Trunks to stop mid-sentence in confusion. He blinked, taken off guard by the warning gleam in the other man's dark eyes.

"You're trying to tell me that you didn't notice at _all _how much you upset her today?" Trunks opened his mouth to resume speaking, but Goten hadn't been looking for an answer. He wasn't about to let him utter another idiotic word until everything was laid out on the table. "To you, you're protecting her from all of this, but to her, you're so angry with her that you can't even look her in the face."

Goten shook his head. "You don't want to lose her as a friend? Then don't say a thing about it—but cut the dramatics... around her, at least."

Somewhere in the midst of his friend's speech, a wave of guilt had come crashing down and washed all of the frustration off of Trunks's features, leaving him looking like a scolded child. How did _Goten _of all people spout enough wisdom to do that to a person? Trunks had pointed out the careless stupidity in many things the other man had done in his life, but to have the tables turned was a new and startling experience. He didn't like it.

But what he liked even less was that he could see a certain raven-haired Saiya-jin's worried, confused face with sudden clarity right in the forefront of his mind. It was a sight he had blocked out for the past couple of days, but Goten's words had forced her hurt expression right back into his consciousness. The disappointment he suddenly felt in himself hit him like a bulldozer.

"I have to apologize to her," he muttered after what seemed like minutes.

Goten tried to hide the relieved smile that broke out onto his features at that—he really did—but ended up smirking triumphantly across the table despite his best efforts. There was what he had set out wanting to hear. Not only did this mean that now both Pan _and _Trunks could stop moping around, but it meant that they could be on good terms again. Which was, of course, very helpful when you would be wedding and having children with someone in the future...

He couldn't help a soft chuckle at thinking of a world where his niece and his best friend weren't in denial of their poorly hidden feelings. Trunks had been adamant that Mirai Trunks was much different than the man he had become, growing up in a world which hadn't been ravaged beyond recognition by some evil force—and, to his credit, that theory held some water. But given what he had witnessed over the past six years, watching the pair's relationship change and develop... In Goten's mind, all this news did was confirm what he had known for a long time:

Somewhere, beyond all of the cruel pranks and prideful jibes, Trunks and Pan loved each other in a way that far crossed the line of Friends.

"Ready to get out of here?" he asked as he watched the man across the table compose himself. As Trunks caught his eyes and nodded, Goten could see that his friend still looked far from relieved about any of this, but certainly seemed less lost.

That was a start.

Where this crazy turn of events would take them, though... Well, that was one thing Goten was very interested in finding out.

* * *

**A/N:** New material! It's new material on this story, you guys! I bet you thought you'd never see the day, but it's finally come!

I suppose I owe you a short update on me after all this time away (although updating once a year seems to becoming something I'm sure you're used to from me by now)... To make a long story short, I graduated college, spent a year at home, and in March flew out on a plane to Tokyo, where I started training my new job teaching English. I was later sent to Hamamatsu for more training and finally to my new home, here in good old Kansai. I'm teaching elementary and junior high schoolers and enjoying every moment of it!

So, that's what's happened, but I've still made some time for this story. As I mentioned before, I don't want to give up on it. I love writing and really enjoy writing this story specifically, but I do it in a rather casual manner when the mood strikes me and I have time. Just these past few days, I've spent making a few more tweaks to the last five chapters (nothing too serious!) and finally fixing the stupid issue with my previous chapter that had 80% of the apostrophes disappearing. My dashes seem to have converted to hyphens as well, but I haven't been able to find a fix for that yet besides just copy-pasting the symbol, so if I miss any, I apologize. Anyway, I'm typing this chapter in Document Manager so that I don't have to do the tiring job of going through and editing punctuation in yet again.

On another side-note, my other online adventures have at times gotten in the way of writing fanfiction... For the past almost four years I've run a YouTube J-Pop karaoke group, which gathers girls from around the world who love singing, J-Pop, and K-Pop to come together and produce 'dubs', or karaokes, of some of our favorite songs. I'm the producer, main mixer, and a vocalist over there, and although this is the main project that gets in the way of my fanfics, I hope you might take a second to hop over and enjoy some music sometime~ The YT account is **HanaProDubs** and if you look out in the descriptions for someone named Sayuri... that's me!

Shameless promotions aside, though, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Read + review, please!

**Reviewer Responses:**

___Gue22_: First off, thanks so much for your consistent reviews on this. I really appreciate it!

Second, thanks even more for your criticism! I always appreciate people who can speak frankly and I totally agree with what you're saying. I've found from the time I began writing that I'm pretty verbose, and that can be a good thing or a bad thing-but in this case, definitely not the best thing. It's something that's more or less part of my style after all these years, but I have been keeping your words in the back of my mind as I write more and trying to pare down the descriptions at least a little bit!

_Mol:_ I'm so glad you can relate! I feel the exact same way. I've turned 23 now and the older and older I get, the more and more serious this story seems to get. I think it's not a coincidence~ haha. Thank you so much for the review!

_Sailor Saiyan007: _Oops, this wasn't a very 'soon' update, was it? I'm so sorry. I hope you're still reading, though!

_dearmag: _Seeing such long and thought out comments from many of my readers, like you, really warms my heart. It's fantastic to get even a 'good job' from anyone, just acknowledging that you wrote something at all, but when people take time and really write their thoughts, it makes me so beyond happy! Thank you so much for your review, and please keep reading on! :D

_ToraNoKo123: _Ahhh, sorry to disappoint you! I'm a year late with this! D:

_DK2.5: _I'm so flattered you think so, thank you bunches! 3

_Pan-chan34:_ You've been here since the beginning and I still remember you! This chapter is especially for you guys who have somehow cared enough to follow this story through so many years. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy it!


	8. 07: Curiosity's Folly

**A Place** **in Time**

**Chapter Seven; Curiosity's Folly**

**Caelestis Kibeth**

_[Goten] couldn't help a soft chuckle at thinking of a world where his niece and his best friend weren't in denial of their poorly hidden feelings. Trunks had been adamant that Mirai Trunks was much different than the man he had become, growing up in a world which hadn't been ravaged beyond recognition by some evil force—and, to his credit, that theory held some water. But given what he had witnessed over the past six years, watching the pair's relationship change and develop... In Goten's mind, all this news did was confirm what he had known for a long time:_

_Somewhere, beyond all of the cruel pranks and prideful jibes, Trunks and Pan loved each other in a way that far crossed the line of Friends._

_"Ready to get out of here?" he asked as he watched the man across the table compose himself. As Trunks caught his eyes and nodded, Goten could see that his friend still looked far from relieved about any of this, but certainly seemed less lost._

_That was a start._

_Where this crazy turn of events would take them, though... Well, that was one thing Goten was very interested in finding out._

* * *

_**Capsule Corporation**_

_**(Present**_ _**Timeline)**_

"Are you done yet?"_  
_

"Just a little bit more."

A grunt of impatience accompanied crossed arms. "It's been nearly an hour already!"

The other girl in the bathroom rolled her eyes. "Beauty takes work, alright?"

"For the last time, though, I don't even want to go to this stupid party—"

A can of hairspray was set on the counter more forcefully than necessary. "Now I _know _I didn't spend the past two weeks planning you a party that you just called stupid."

"Ugh, it's not that I don't appreciate it, it's just that—"

"Listen, I am going to stab you with this bobby pin if you don't sit still and shut up."

"Like _you_ could manage the strength to stab me with any—_OUCH!_"

The speed with which Pan whipped around in her chair to send a ferocious glare towards her best friend was blinding. Bra, entirely unaffected after twenty-one years of deflecting the far superior murderous looks of her own father, didn't even bat an eyelash. Instead, she threw back a glare of her own and sternly placed her hands on Pan's shoulders to force her back in the opposite direction.

"If you dare peek at my work before it's finished, you're going to have a lot worse things poked at you than a bobby pin, so _sit still_!" Bra demanded, fairly calmly but still managing to sound serious enough to make Pan think twice about the protest already poised on the tip of her tongue. In the end, it fell away uselessly as the raven-haired Saiya-jin miserably resigned herself to her fate at last.

This was useless, of course, Bra's grand idea of giving her such a makeover. Pan was and always would be a hopeless tomboy. She had never possessed the sumptuous curves, the nice chest, the smooth skin, the basic _girl_ gene that made women like her best friend into the confident, graceful beings that they were. While she would never dare doubt the skills of a Briefs woman in being a master in the field of femininity, there were just some people who would always be beyond help. Pan had no problem with facing reality and admitting that she was one of those people.

Well alright, so she had a _little_ problem with it. It hadn't exactly been fun being the butt of Trunks and her uncle's jokes for the past 20 years, after all. It hadn't been fun going through high school with the majority of the male student body refusing to ask her on a simple date—not even just because she was so strong, but because her rougher-than-usual looks gave them no reason to _want_ to either. But when it came down to it, what was the point in getting herself down about something over which she had no control? As a teenager, subject to all of the fears and insecurities that one was prone to be at that age, it had been a bigger concern, but she was an adult now. Whatever her own physical shortcomings were, Pan had long ago come to terms with them and chosen to look at the things that she loved about herself.

For example, like how she could kick any of those boys' sorry behinds in a head-on match. With one hand tied behind her back. Surely it would have been fun to prove them wrong, but that was no more than a fanciful notion which she had no idea why Bra was wasting her time entertaining when she could think of approximately four hundred and sixty-seven other things which would have been better employments of the past hour.

"There we go!"

Pan blinked, having been waken from her reverie by Bra's sudden pronouncement. Had they really been that close to being finished, or had she just been so out of it that she had lost track of the minutes? Either way, Pan was just about ready to leap out of that chair regardless of whether Bra had made her into a beauty queen or dyed her hair pink and put a monkey on her head.

Her leg muscles screamed in protest as she stood, uncomfortably stiff after being sat in one place for so long. It took her a moment, but once Pan was up, Bra stood aside, a Cheshire grin plastered across her face, and made way for a stranger to step forward from behind... A _gorgeous_ stranger, of diminutive height and flowing black shoulder-length hair, encased in a figure-accenting white cocktail dress that cinched at the hips and then fell softly down to a point just above her knees. In her hair was a single braid on the right side, the top clipped with a diamond-and-pearl dangling ornament that resembled teardrops. On the backdrop of the mysterious woman's perfectly pitch black hair, each gem looked like a falling star within the vast expanse of space, reminding Pan for a split second of a time in her life when she had been younger, stupider, and all of her relationships so much less complicated.

But that wasn't all that there was about this mysterious woman which was so alluring. It was the mildly puzzled, innocent look on her face as she stared wordlessly back into Pan's eyes that she was caught up on. It was like she wasn't sure why she was there or who had brought her to this sinfully pink bathroom, or like she was peering into a mirror and seeing herself for the first time.

And then it hit her. A _mirror._ She was looking into a _mirror_, the full-length wall mirror that took up one whole side of her best friend's needlessly expansive bathroom, and the puzzled girl _was_ Pan and she _was_ in a way seeing herself for the first time. But at the same time as she realized this, Pan honestly couldn't believe it. It would have taken nothing short of a wish to the dragon to make _her_ look like _that. _For the love of Dende, she looked better than ninty-five percent of Trunks _and_ Goten's harems of supermodel ex-girlfriends.

_Combined._

A smirk couldn't help but draw up on the edge of her mouth as Bra stepped up behind her friend and threw her arms around Pan's shoulders, a matching smirk on her own face.

"See, I told you that you should have let me do this years ago," she gloated.

"Yeah, I guess so," came the quiet but undeniably awestruck reply. One of Pan's fingers twisted into a lock of her hair idly before letting it rest back on her collarbone again, and the grin on her best friend's face only widened.

Bra felt marvelously triumphant, not simply because she had proven her best friend's past 20 years of arguments to be invalid, but because, as a friend, she knew that this was exactly what Pan needed at the moment: to see herself again, to be reminded that she _wasn__'t _a ghost... and to catch some well-deserved attention from a certain lavender-haired jerk who needed a severe wake-up call. The reason the raven-haired Saiya-jin had been so morose lately, after all, was because she was so not-so-secretly in love with Trunks, and his behavior towards her over the past week had been less than kind, and certainly less than normal. It had thrown Pan through a loop for sure, and no matter how many times she tried to deny and deflect, Bra knew better than anyone the real truth behind the matter.

Of course Bra knew that there were reasons behind Trunks' attitude too—however little she agreed with the idea that they warranted the silent treatment of all things—but she and Goten had talked at length about the problem and were both certain that he would come around soon enough. Tonight was a good a night as any, they had thought, to start the ball rolling back in Pan's direction again, and what better way to do it than to give Trunks the shock of his life and remind him what he had right in front of him? After all, Pan looked absolutely _stunning, _if Bra did say so herself. If this look didn't scream 'get over yourself and have babies with me already!' then her brother really had gone off the deep end.

That being said, one glance at the clock told her that if they didn't get down to the party soon, there might not _be_ a Trunks to impress. While her brother had vowed to his friend that he would definitely be approaching Pan that evening to make amends, Goten hadn't been so certain. Bra was inclined to agree. He would show up for sure, but whether he stayed long enough to actually go through with things was another question. Over the past week, she had seen little to no indication that Trunks was getting any better with handling the idea of the children—in fact, he had taken to sleeping in one of the company apartments, off on the other side of the city, simply to avoid them—and he still acted like a hormonal teenage girl whenever she mentioned anything to do with the subject.

Then again, if Trunks dared to hurt Pan on her birthday, he was going to have a lot worse problems to worry about than looking at the faces of a few toddlers every day.

Whatever may come, though, Bra had done her part. She knew that all she could do now was sit back, grab some popcorn, and watch how this drama was going to play itself out. Untwining her arms from around Pan, she stood next to her, taking a moment to admire her own get-up as well. Hell, maybe she could start a little romantic drama for herself while she was at it, she thought with a flip of her own hair directed at her reflection.

Tearing her eyes away from herself, Bra turned towards Pan—who, she would never admit it out loud, might have looked better than even she did tonight. "So you think you can get through this night now without totally hating me forever?"

Pan took a deep breath and nodded, the fingers of her hand twining through Bra's and giving it a grateful squeeze. For all the times they didn't understand each other at all, she really did have the best best friend ever.

"Let's get down there and blow some minds."

* * *

"We're not supposed to be here..."

"Would you shut _up_?" The reprimand was hissed through a pair of teeth, and with a rustle of fabric, a high-pitched voice squeaked in pain.

"What was that for!" came an agitated protest by the wounded party. "We're _not_ supposed to be here!"

"Vegeta's right, Gohan." The third voice was distinctly female, and the soft features of Musume Briefs came alive in a sliver of purple light from the door through she was peeking. "What if Grandma catches us? Or _Grandpa_?"

Despite the general blackness of the hall around the three children, they could each tell that the other two had felt a distinct shiver run down their spines at the idea of the ill-tempered, height-challenged Saiya-jin prince going off on another one of his rampages—the likes of which they were already extremely familiar with, even after only one week spent under the same roof. Not yet had one of them come up with a feasible explanation as for why Vegeta the Elder acted in the irrational manner in which he did, but they had learned very quickly that they did not want to get on his bad side.

"You're both a couple of babies," Gohan replied with a frown. "Musu, _you_ were the one who said we should sneak down here in the first place!"

"I didn't mean for real!" his exasperated sister exclaimed, earning another round of shushing. Before she could become the second victim to Gohan's violence, she lowered her voice. "I thought we were just _talking_, not that we were actually going to _do _it..."

Musume gave another surreptitious glance through the doorway before turning back to her brothers with a troubled mask shrouding what they could manage to see of her face in the darkness. From downstairs and just through that very door, the deep bass of party music gave a slight shake to the walls around them, and the distant chatter of voices could be detected from over the din. Down there was their mother's birthday party—they had overheard their aunt Bra talking about it—and that meant that down there was their _mother_. They had been deathly curious about seeing what was all happening on the floor below just fifteen minutes prior, as they had laid in bed trying to sleep like they had been instructed to. They had all agreed that it might be fun, just a little, to sneak down and get a peek at this younger, more carefree version of their mother.

However, now that they were actually there, just a couple of steps away from all the action, only Gohan was not left shaking in his footed pajamas at the idea of what might happen were they caught.

_Or rather,_ Musume thought with a sigh, _maybe I just don't want to meet her and find out that she's just as mean as this world's Papa is._

"I've got an idea."

Two raven-haired heads turned towards the sound of the third voice; it had been Vegeta, hanging back at the end of their pack. The smallest Briefs child brought up a hand to run through his perpetually messy hair and regarded his siblings curiously. "Maybe we don't have to go down _there_ to see her," he suggested timidly. His ideas always seemed stupider when he said them out loud.

Gohan rolled his eyes. And here he thought that Vegeta had finally jumped back on board. It really was annoying being the only one with a backbone sometimes. "If you say we should go back up to bed, I am going to kick you," he muttered.

Vegeta now sent a glare through the shadows. "I wasn't _gonna_," he pushed. "I was gonna say that we should go to the garden."

The garden on the Capsule Corp. property, a vast expanse of land which filled the entirety of the back lawn, had been one of the only places on the compound where the three children had been allowed to spend much of the past week. They had enjoyed playing hide and seek around what must have been hundreds of different types of bushes and plants and trees, splashing around in the pool, and peeking in the windows of the domed gravity chamber—whenever they thought their grandfather wouldn't catch them, anyway. But other than being an endless source of entertainment for bored toddlers, the garden was also conveniently accessible to the Briefs' main living room by a wall's length full of glass. It would be a perfect place to get a clear shot of the action, while staying fairly hidden at the same time.

It took Gohan less than a second to consider the suggestion before he was on his feet, eyes wide with excitement and impatiently pulling on the arms of his brother and sister. "Little bro, you're brilliant!" he enthused, ignoring Vegeta's grumbling at the name and pulling both reluctant siblings to their feet. Gohan had made it over to the window on the opposite side of the hall faster than lightning—he was already on the sill, ready to jump down to the yard below, before either of the other two could even come up with a breath of air to protest.

He hit the grass softly and glanced over his shoulder expectantly. Vegeta and Musume knelt together on the edge, staring at each other with eyes dull with resignation. When someone got Gohan Briefs started on something, there was just no stopping him. You either got pulled along for the ride or trampled along the way, and no one knew that better than his brother and sister.

"At least we get to see Mom?" Vegeta offered with a shrug, before floating off the sill to where Gohan was.

Musume just shook her head.

As she hovered lethargically down towards the lawn below, she just couldn't help but to think that this was going to be a big, _big _mistake.

* * *

Awash in the violet and silver glow of the party lights, the expansive living area of the Briefs residence was nearly unrecognizable to its resident of the past 34 years. On one side of the large room, an open bar had been set up from the half-wall into the kitchen. There, party guests sat on stools of leather, sipping only cocktails which had been approved to fit with the specified color scheme of the event. On the other side, a DJ presided over the dance floor, swaying back and forth to the heavy bass beats of a remix of some popular song, feeding off the energy of the crowd gathered before him below the disco ball. Along the walls were hundreds of tiny twinkling lights, shining like stars from behind the yards of glistening lavender fabric draped from the ceiling. A cake, four tiers and garishly displaying a message of 'Happy 20th birthday, Pan!' sat on a table near the door, its resplendence nearly overtaken by the mountain of presents on either side and in front—again, all wrapped according to a _very_ strict color theme that Bra would have beaten into the heads of every person on the guest list beforehand.

Every corner of the room was filled to the brim with those very guests; mingling, drinking, dancing and generally adding to the nightclub-esque atmosphere that had been created around them. Trunks had to wrack his brain to identify even a handful of them—and imagined that Pan knew even less—but he knew that mentioning such a thing to his sister was out of the question. Everyone simply accepted that when Bra Briefs went into full party-planner mode, it immediately became much more her party than anyone else's and there was no use fighting her on it. Even when the occasion was her best friend's birthday and this scene _should_ have looked much different than it did.

Bra was selfish, frustratingly so. It took everything in him to not go grab her from her place at the bar—where she was currently balancing a martini glass and being entirely too engaged in some joke Goten was making—and give her a firm shake.

It was partially for this reason that he had resigned himself to a far corner of the room not long after arriving fifteen minutes prior. It was better, perhaps, if he just laid low and observed for the time being. He had strategically chosen a nice spot in an alcove which he had determined to be the darkest area, in order to draw as little attention to himself as possible. There was a specific danger in a party such as this. As West City's most eligible bachelor, the second he showed his face around all these strangers he would never get a moment alone for the rest of the night.

Normally he would have been basking in the glow of the limelight. Tonight was different. Tonight was not about him.

Tonight was about a close friend, one to whom he had some very deep apologies to make after the detestable way in which he had treated her over the past several days. It had taken a serious talk from Goten of all people for him to figure it out, but Trunks knew now: whatever it was that he felt towards those mysterious children who had shown up, no matter how awkward it was to be around her with these disturbing new what-if's that had forced themselves into his peripheral vision... he could not treat Pan like a stranger. He could not punish her over his own torments.

She was one of the dearest people in his life. She deserved better than that.

Even knowing that, it didn't make any of this any easier. His hand tightened around a small box in his back pocket and he sighed, looking out over the crowd and feeling his purpose slip away a little more with each passing second.

When he had stepped through the door that night, Trunks had been more than ready to do this and get it over with. He'd had his speech memorized, had talked himself up, and had gone in with his resolve as strong as if he were stepping up to face any one of the many formidable foes they had gone up against over the years.

The problem was, his 'foe' that night, the diminutive Saiya-jin with the raven hair and onyx eyes, had not come to meet him.

In fact, even now as he stood back and scanned the crowd for the millionth time, Trunks still could not spot Pan among the raucous revelers. It seemed odd that she would not be in attendance to her own party if Bra was so seemingly unperturbed—then again, at times it seemed that Bra could get so caught up in cooing over Goten that she might not have noticed. He gave a deep frown, and his hand on the box constricted nervously once again. Pan couldn't have skipped out already or his plan would be ruined. If he didn't talk to her tonight, Trunks wasn't sure when he'd be able to psyche himself up enough to do it again.

Not to mention, it was important that it _be_ tonight. The last thing he wanted on his conscience at the moment was to have ruined her birthday on top of all the harm he had already done over the past week. He clenched his jaw.

And that's when he saw her.

It was just a glimpse. A flash of milky fabric and dark hair, the shutting of a sliding door, and she was gone before he could even tell whether it had been a dream or reality. It didn't matter if it _was_ a dream, because before he knew it, Trunks's feet were moving beneath him, taking a brisk pace towards the door out to the garden, shrugging off the hands of several scantily-clad women who had been quick to recognize him as he went.

It was only when the wall of cold night air slammed into him that he realized what he was doing and where he was. It was like a haze had lifted from his eyes as he blinked and his racing thoughts slowly settled to take in the scene before him.

Like some vision out of a fantasy book, she stood there a few mere yards away, heels spun through the slender digits of her left hand as she padded barefoot just centimeters from the edge of the crystalline pool. The lights from under the calm water cast an illuminating glow upon her figure, softening her features into a mask of serenity and reflecting in her eyes quietly. It contoured the well-toned lines of her body underneath the flowing fabric of her dress, and for the first time, Trunks noticed that Pan might have grown up much more in the past few years than he had ever thought to give her credit for. It was probably just the time and place, he thought, but he couldn't quite shake the odd feeling that he had spent the past five years of his life blindly ignoring that something extraordinary had been gradually coming together right in front of him.

It was then that he caught himself, and the heat rose to his face. What was he thinking?

No, this was Pan. There was no way that she would ever _really_ be anything in his mind other than the stubborn, fiery, tomboy little sister he'd never had. But tonight he could at least admit that maybe, looking the way she did at that moment, to the unfamiliar eye Pan Son was not exactly a little girl anymore.

"You know, standing around staring at people is kind of creepy."

She turned her head gradually over her left shoulder to send him a one-eyed glance. He couldn't read what was in those eyes of hers from his current distance, but if her tone of voice—equal parts stormy and weary—were any indicator, then he could imagine that she was in fact still quite angry with him.

Trunks opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to the punch, this time turning around fully to face the lavender-haired warrior. "Well? Are you going to say something, or are you going to dash off like a scared animal again?" The serene image from before was immediately shattered as she crossed her arms over her chest and fixed him with an expectant look.

A frustrated retort bubbled up from his throat and Trunks barely caught it before it could pass his lips. No, this was not how he wanted to play this. He was there to apologize, not take his frustration and embarrassment out on her like he had been inadvertently doing all week.

Well, shit. He hadn't exactly been very good at doing anything _but_ yelling at everyone lately. This was going to be more of a challenge than he had anticipated. In an uncharacteristically nervous manner, he reached up to scratch his head and turned his eyes to the pavement below.

"Ah, actually I was kind of hoping that we could—you know... talk." Mentally, Trunks cursed at himself. This had come out a lot smoother in theory than it was coming out in practice. "I mean, if you don't totally hate me..."

His voice trailed off in uncertainty and he waited for the inevitable smack to the face to come. He deserved no less, that was for sure.

It never came.

Instead, the warmth and softness of a female hand gripped his own, and he was finding himself nudged from his spot. When Trunks finally allowed his eyes to rise from their focus on the ground, he noticed that the other Saiya-jin was quite suddenly a mere foot's breadth away from him, pulling him off in the direction of an area off to the side of the main pool yard.

Together, they ducked through a hedged archway and immediately he recognized the clearing that had opened up around him as his mother's favorite little place in the garden. It was a small area, containing only a low stone bench and surrounded by tall, flowering bushes to ensure privacy—perhaps the _only_ private place in the entire yard, if there was one—but it was the perfect place for a quiet moment alone away from prying eyes.

A few _not-_so-quiet, _not-_so-alone moments that he'd spent in that very place came rushing back into his memory and Trunks bit down on the inside of his cheek, trying to get his thoughts off of such things. This was probably the _worst_ time ever to be remembering how many girlfriends he had brought back to that very spot... Because, quite honestly, with Pan in that get-up that Bra had undoubtedly shoved her into, and all of her previously undiscovered curves and other womanly features being swathed in the moonlight, it was becoming increasingly difficult to remind himself just whom he was standing there with.

This was _not_ a conversation to be having while thinking about what it might be like, just once, to see if she tasted just as nice as she looked tonight.

It was a good thing that Pan had chosen that very moment to spin on her heel and fix him with a stern glare, ripping their hands apart and effectively killing any inappropriate thoughts he had previously been harboring. The storm brewing in her eyes brought him back to solid ground and he remembered the hole that he needed to begin digging himself out of. His stomach turned, half in fear of her well-justified wrath and half in disgust at himself for the places he had allowed his mind to wander.

"Listen, Briefs," Pan deadpanned him. "You've got three minutes to make your case before I go back in there and stop letting you ruin my night."

Trunks cringed inwardly, but searched himself deep down for his earlier resolve and grasped onto it firmly. After all, he had to count himself lucky that she was speaking to him at all.

Removing his hands from his pockets, he laid them out in front of her, palms up. "Look, Pan—I'm sorry," he began, feeling perhaps lamer than he ever had in his life. "I know I've been acting like an—"

"—enormous dick, jackass, idiot, worst friend ever—"

Despite that he knew he deserved those insults, Trunks shot Pan a glare to put a halt to her string of names. Couldn't she let him genuinely apologize without jumping down his throat in the middle of it? Sometimes she made things so much more difficult than they had to be.

"Yes, yes, and yes," Trunks agreed through gritted teeth. "And if you're going to give me three minutes, I'd appreciate it if you stop wasting it with name-calling and let me actually talk."

Pan sighed, making it clear that she had much more to say, but she reluctantly kept her mouth shut and waited for him to continue. Although she was no longer lashing out at him verbally, her right foot did begin moving up and down impatiently on the grass in lieu of words.

Trunks ran a hand back through his hair. "Alright," he began. "Just so you know, I'm not here to make excuses for myself, and I'm not here to tell you that I have a good explanation for the way I've been acting lately." It was a lie, of course—he had a _great_ explanation. That was the whole problem, wasn't it? "But I want you to know that I realize now how I've been taking it out on you and I know that it's not fair."

In a moment of bravery, he chanced two steps towards her so he could look Pan straight in the eye. His hands itched, yearning to take her by the shoulders the way he always did when reassuring her, but in the remaining sane part of his mind he knew that might be one step too far over the line for the moment. Instead, he clenched them at his sides, nearly turning his knuckles white with the pressure.

"I've just had a lot of stuff come up lately, and instead of talking about it, I've just been getting angry and lashing out at everyone," he admitted. That much was not a lie, at least. "I was selfish, but Goten finally made me realize how I was pushing you away and I wanted to apologize. You don't deserve it, especially on your birthday."

Somewhere during Trunks's speech, Pan's expression had turned from agitation to mild confusion. Her arms remained crossed, but her grip had slackened noticably. If there was one thing upon which she prided herself, it was that she _knew_ Trunks. As Pan searched his beseeching eyes, listened to the troubled tone of his voice, she could tell that he was being sincere. For the moment, he had completely let his guard down and was acting entirely out of character. One thing was for sure: he _was_ truly sorry.

But that didn't mean that she wasn't still hurt. That didn't mean that she understood.

"I have one question, though," she frowned.

"What?"

"Just—_why?_"

And there was the kicker. Trunks could nearly hear the blood rushing to his face as he briefly entertained the notion of telling her the truth, spilling everything—about the time machine, about the kids, about _her_ and this inexplicable reality warp that had come crashing down into his lap and turned his life upside-down. But there was no way. He could already never look at her the same way again. The last thing he wanted was for Pan to run away from him the way he had from her. Even if that was what he should have had coming to him following his own actions in response to the same news.

"I can't tell you that," he settled for regretfully.

"You are so full of shit, Trunks!" She'd had it with this. How dare he give _that_ as his response? "I can't believe I even listened to a second of your pathetic—"

"No, Pan, wait—!"

She spun around and pierced him with a poison-laced glare, first to his face and then to the place on her arm where his hand currently gripped her, stopping her in her trajectory out of the clearing. His gut instinct screamed at him that he was treading dangerous ground here, but he would not let go of her arm. He could not let her leave this garden still angry at him. That was all Trunks really knew at the moment, but he knew it desperately.

Her voice lowered immediately to a deadly whisper. "_Let me go_," she warned him.

What was he supposed to do? Trunks's mind raced, trying to come up with a good solution, but following each train of thought only to reach a dead end. True, he and Pan had gotten into countless arguments and spats over the past twenty years of her existence, but never had he seen her mad like _this. _In a way, he couldn't even understand why she was so seething, or why this had struck such a nerve. She was furious with him, and for the life of him Trunks could not figure out what part of this situation it was that had cut so deep. Angry had been expected, yes, but this was on a whole other playing field.

"Look," he urged her, trying to keep his voice steady under her agitated stare. "I _want_ to tell you, trust me—you're the _only_ one I want to tell, but—it's just—it's better if I don't do that right now."

Before she could open her mouth to retort, he continued on. "That's why I've been so angry and closed off lately, Pan. I _want_ to talk about this, but it's so personal that I just—" He broke off in a sigh and his eyes grew sad, imploring her. Had he had time to think about anything other than making his story believable at that moment, he would have been sickened with himself and how quickly he was able to twist the truth around.

"I just need you to believe me, please_._"

There was silence then, and a tension palpable enough to cut with a knife. Pan's face betrayed no emotion other than upset, but he knew that if she wasn't punching him, she must have been thinking. He still had a chance.

"_Please_," he repeated, this time with even more emphasis. "You know I wouldn't keep it from you if it weren't vital."

Trunks hated himself in that moment, more than he had hated himself in a long time. But when her arm fell down to her side and her shoulders slumped, Trunks knew that Pan had accepted his words, and for tonight that was the only victory that he needed.

Taking advantage of this newfound calm before he found some way to ruin it again, he quickly reached into his back pocket, remembering the box that had been there all night. Raising his eyebrows at her expectantly, he forced Pan to meet his eyes before holding it out in his palm.

"I know you don't take well to bribes, and I know it's not in Bra Briefs-approved wrappings, but..." he trailed off, doing his best to look apprehensive even whilst being certain that she would take it. It didn't hurt him to act a little humble after everything that had just occured.

"Happy birthday, Pan."

Hoping to keep him nervous, Pan stared at the tiny box for a good, long minute, but finally reached out and took it into her own palm. Freshly manicured fingers—those were going to be a bitch to get off before training the next morning—slowly lifted up the lid. As she revealed the sparkling multi-star pendant necklace laying on blue velvet, it took everything that Pan had in her to appear unimpressed. She took her time staring at it with as impassive an expression as she could muster, but inside she was anything but impassive. In her mind, she was wondering any number of things—how much had this cost him? When had she told him that she liked stars? Had Trunks finally realized that she was a girl and chosen a present to reflect that?

Did this gift perhaps mean that he might finally be seeing her in a new light?

"I hate you," she muttered with a sigh, cursing the twitch at the edge of her lips that betrayed her true sentiments.

Trunks broke out into a full-fledged grin, knowing now for certain that this disaster was over. "I wasn't sure if you'd like it," he lied, again far too easily. Of course he knew she'd like it. A person would have to have been blind to miss the indignance Pan had shown over the past several years to his and Goten's treating her like their long-lost little brother. He certainly hadn't. A gift like this, one which showed her that he had been paying attention to her frustration over never being seen as the girl she was, was a shoe-in to win her forgiveness.

Moving quickly, he reached over and removed the necklace from its box, then stepped behind her to latch it at the base of her neck. "But it seemed better to get you something a little different since you're an adult now," he said. "And when I saw the stars, I thought of all that time we spent together traveling the galaxy way back when."

He returned to his former spot and shrugged. "It seemed appropriate."

"It's perfect," Pan admitted at last. Shaking her head—her hair moved fluidly, like rippling water, he realized for the first time—and turning up towards the moon above, the smile on her face had turned peaceful. Come to think of it, Trunks had never seen Pan smile like that before. Always was she impish, joyous, or a mixture of both. Never just content the way she was then.

"I don't usually know why I end up forgiving you, but this time you did good."

There. That was that, Trunks thought. Even if he could not be rid of the root of the problem, at least he had mended things between himself and Pan. Despite that spinning the truth may not have been the most moral of tactics to use, it had been the best way, and he felt a little lighter overall already for having settled this. Now, with any luck, his future self would hurry up and come and pick up those three kids soon, before they managed to ruin his life any more than they already had.

"Trunks, did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

He regarded Pan in surprise and noticed that her eyes had narrowed in concentration and were aimed towards a specific bush on the opposite side of the clearing. He honestly hadn't heard anything, although he could not admit to having been paying much attention. It seemed, however, that Pan had definitely caught up on something being amiss.

Gingerly, as so to not make any sound, she lowered herself to the ground to pick up a mid-sized rock and then straightened again, holding it in a defensive posture and staring down the same bush. Trunks opened his mouth to inquire further, but he was silenced before he began by way of a single finger raised in his direction. Forbidden from speaking, he did the only thing he could, and reached out with his senses to detect who or whatever had Pan's wrath coming for it.

He felt them just a split second too late.

"Didn't your mothers ever teach you that spying is _rude_!?" Pan shouted, and simultaneously chucked her weapon in the direction of the bush.

Perhaps it would ruin the whole nice 'womanly' image that she had going with Trunks at the moment, but there was no way in hell that she was going to let Goten and Bra think they could get away with sneaking around like a couple of badly mannered children. Those two always stuck their noses into things that that were none of their concern, and Pan was tired of it. It was about _time _that both of them got smacked over the head with a heavy object to get the message across.

Except that what emerged from the bushes was decidedly _not_ her uncle and her best friend. It was not two people at all, nor were they even adults. A shiver ran down Pan's spine as three familiar toddlers rolled out, one nursing a bump on his very Goku-esque head.

Pan fought to control her shaking hands.

Trunks wanted to throw up.

"Okay, I-I'm serious—" she struggled for words. No, this boy, who was ever the spitting image of her beloved grandfather, could not be here again. _How_ was he here _again_? "Trunks, who—who _are_ they?"

Trunks, however, was having trouble hearing anything over the sound of his own blood pumping through his veins at a hundred miles a minute. He felt hot and light-headed and when he opened his mouth to feebly attempt a whole new round of fables to somehow fix this, he found that his mouth was filled with cotton.

"_Trunks, tell me who they are!_"

He didn't have to. Just then, another rustle of bushes sounded behind them, and Bra stepped out, Goten on her heels. She gave her friend a guilt-ridden look and sighed.

"Pan... they're your children."

* * *

**A/N:** OKAY YOU GUYS I officially give up making promises about this story. For those of you who have been following me for a while (some of you crazies have even stuck with me from the beginning, which is just. Mind-blowing and I do not deserve such great readers as you), you know that I make promises all the time to start updating regularly again and I just for some reason always end up never being able to stick to that. Sometimes it's about lack of motivation, but a lot of it really is usually real life things and as much as that sucks, they do keep seeming to pop up and happen and I lose ability to work on the story at a regular pace. This time it was my crazy year working between four Japanese public schools, often having 6 classes a day (of 6 possible classes), and moving around so much that I was having to do so many different lesson plans and making so many materials that I just did not have time for much except for work. It didn't help that it was my first year teaching this course material, so I started with nothing.

As of this month, I've started a different contract working in a different city and working at just two schools—one JHS and one ES, which is soooo much easier than one JHS and three ESes. I am at the JHS most of the time, and anyone who has ever been in this kind of job probably knows that JHS is way easier than ES and offers a lot more free time. Of course, having taught a year of the exact same coursework already now is also helping me LOADS. Plus the fact that I am at my new JHS 90% of the time has given me a chance over the past two weeks to work on my writing again, which is really nice. I even started a prologue to a story called **Here With Me**, which is actually a prequel to this fic. I promised that fic to one of the most loyal readers of APiT back in August and finally am following through. But not to worry—this one is still my priority. I was just feeling inspired.

Anyway, yes. No more promises about updating quickly. I obviously can't be held to them. All I can tell you guys is that I really want to see this fic finished someday and I am going to do my very best to keep it going on. So keep reading and reviewing, my beautiful fluffy sugar bears! 3

**P.S.** I DID write almost 2,000 words more than usual in this chapter, so enjoy!


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